


The Calm to The Storm

by natigail



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: Aliens, Black is a coldhearted imposter but he can't keep from being fascinated with Cyan, Body Horror, Cyan is a talented crewmate who just wants to help everyone but he grows wary of Black, Enemies to Lovers, Gen, Murder, Murderers, Other, Outer Space, POV Multiple, The Skeld (Among Us)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 64,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27371329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natigail/pseuds/natigail
Summary: They are enemies with opposing missions. Cyan is supposed to fix the Skeld and make sure everyone makes it home okay. Black is supposed to sabotage the Skeld and make sure that none of the human crewmates survive.Black should have killed Cyan at first opportunity and Cyan should have reported Black at first sight of suspicion. They do no such things and now they have to figure out why they are hesitating.
Relationships: Black/Cyan (Among Us), Crewmate/Impostor (Among Us)
Comments: 120
Kudos: 241





	1. Alien

**Author's Note:**

> I have played the game a total of one session and seen maybe a dozen videos but my brain still decided that I needed to project personalities onto the colours and write up this story. Come join me in this indulgence.
> 
> TW: sexism, murder, body being cut in half

It was entirely too easy to sneak onto the little shuttle for the two imposters. They had spent years being trained for missions like this. Their superiors would have been proud of them.

Their space suits were perfect replicas of the ones that the human crewmates wore. It was to be expected since they had been stolen from the HQ that the shuttle was currently leaving. It had been as easy as the entrance exam that both of them had aced before they were chosen for this mission. Their papers and fake names were immaculate too, forgeries of the highest class from their home planet and the human’s supposedly great technology had not caught a single irregularity.

Now they were just quietly waiting for the safe arrival at the ship that they were sent to fix and bring back home to the MIRA headquarters. Only the ship and the crew would never make it home if the two imposters were successful.

They had learned tactics to blend in too, but so far none of them had engaged in any so-called small talk. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary, since none of the eight human crewmates seemed much for conversation either.

However, after ten minutes of nice silence, one of the humans broke the silence.

“Are you nervous? I’m nervous,” the crewmate in the purple suit muttered to the person in the cyan suit next to them. “Oh, wait, I’m sorry where are my manners, my name is-”

“No,” the person next to them said, voice gentle despite the interruption. “We don’t use names here, remember? Safety protocol. We’re our colours.”

“Oh… right. Sorry…” the crewmate in the purple suit said.

“First time?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Cyan,” the person in next to them said, even extending a hand.

Purple seemed to straighten up and accept the hand. A handshake. It was a form of human greeting and one that both imposters had seen before. White seemed less interested in the mundane conversation that was about to go down – they had both heard it before – but Black found themselves listening in all the same. They had never been on a mission where one of the crewmates had been a complete newbie.

It would just make their mission easier.

“I’m Purple then,” Purple replied and tried to properly shake Cyan’s hand.

It didn’t go very well but Black supposed it was the effort that counted. Humans were weird like that. All of the crewmates, fake and real, were wearing these bulky suits with a thick visor over their face. It was thick to protect them from exposure to anything unfortunate, but it was clear to see out of, just not in. All you could see were a vague outline of a face. It worked well for the imposters, as their species could vaguely shapeshift to resemble humans but not enough that minor differences would not be noticed.

“Did you just finish training?” Cyan enquired.

Black registered it as politeness. They had heard that before too, but there was something new in Cyan’s tone. They didn’t sound bored when they asked.

“Aww, we got a baby on the team,” the person in the red suit cooed, but in a mocking way.

Ah, Black recognised that type well enough. There were always a few of them on any of the mission. Assholes, they believed that humans called them.

“That’s the best you can come up with? Really?” the person in the blue suit asked. “That’s so basic.”

Blue and Red kept bickering back and forth, now insulting each other. Perhaps it was meant to be light poking fun. Still, when Black pulled up their files, he found that they both had previous registered anger management issues that had landed them on this repair mission in the first place.

Cyan and Purple had gone back to their own conversation, speaking so hushed that it was hard to pick up over the sound of Blue and Red bickering so loudly. Black had half a mind to tell them to shut up but they knew that they shouldn’t be drawing attention to themselves this early in the mission.

While Black couldn’t hear the full conversation of Cyan and Purple, they did notice that Purple’s posture seemed to ease more and more as they talked to Cyan. Ten minutes later, and Purple was talking louder and more excited about supposedly “cool” tricks they had learned during training.

Black pulled up Purple’s file to see they were indeed new to the whole thing. They had graduated from training last week. This was their very first mission. If Black had cared about the lives of these insignificant humans, they might have felt bad that this mission would also be their last.

“Oh, you’ll have a great time,” Cyan said, genuine excitement in their voice. Black quickly consulted their file as well. His file, Black corrected as he saw the pronouns listed.

Such a silly thing for humans to be concerned with. Black and White’s race had no such thing as gender and they had both just put down the neutral pronouns that humans sometimes used. However, a quick scan confirmed that just one other person, Purple, went by those pronouns so Black sneakily updated their pronouns in their file. They chose him/he for no particular reason other than the most common gender of this particular group. Easier to blend in and frankly, they had no real preference. He/him pronouns were as good as any other.

Every crewmate had access to these files but only the technology that had been implanted specially in White and Black’s suits allowed them to edit it on the fly. Another form of sabotage if they should need it. White seemed to notice Black meddling with the files and turned their head towards him just a little but they didn’t say anything. A second later, White’s pronouns changed to he/him as well.

Their crewmates were all none the wiser. This mission would be so easy; Black could already tell. Red and Blue’s arguing had quieted down a bit but they still grumbled and shot insults at each other. Purple and Cyan were innocently chatting. Green was reading a book, somehow managing to turn the pages even with thick material around her hand. Brown was snoring loudly, his head tipped back and Yellow was tapping her hand against her leg. Pink was talking to talking to someone inside of her helmet, muted so the rest of them couldn’t hear.

Well so most of them couldn’t hear. Black briefly checked in on the conversation but the human was just bitching about being sent on this repair mission. A quick glimpse at her file showed that she had also been marked by a reprimand.

It seemed to be a trend. Inexperienced or barely experienced, half of whom who had reprimands in their files. It was a poor excuse for a crew. Only Green stood out with the many years of service as a repair tech and an immaculate history. Black made a note to be careful around her.

“I can’t believe we’re actually in space,” Purple said and looked up at the celling. It was futile endeavour since none of the little shuttle showed a view of space.

If they wanted to see space, Black would be more than happy to expel them from the ship though.

“We were in space at HQ too,” Cyan said, gently correcting. “But I know what you mean. Your first time is something special, you know?”

“How many times have you been?” Purple asked.

Black could not understand why they didn’t just consult the file. They had it right there in their suit. The information at their fingertips. Why would they waste time on conversation when there was an easier way of obtaining the information? It baffled Black a little.

“This is my 7th time,” Cyan said, a happy note in his voice. Black imagined that he might be smiling.

He wasn’t sure what there was to smile about. This was a crap assignment but Cyan sounded excited about it for some infallible reason. Black double-checked Cyan’s file and found that this was the only type of missions he had ever been on. A newbie surely but usually a crewmate only went through three mandatory repair missions before they were allowed to transfer to something more exciting.

Despite himself, Black was curious. It was new feeling. Maybe being around humans were rubbing off on him. After all, it was his 7th mission too. Only he had always been an imposter – a murderous alien imposter pretending to be a human crewmate.

Cyan was excited to get started with this repair. It was not only because it felt good to be back on missions but also because his shoulder injury had finally cleared up. It had taken him out of commission for only two weeks, and he had decided against registering it in his papers.

It had been during an accident on his last repair mission when a newbie had been trying to stabilizing the steering and instead managed to nearly turn the whole ship upside down. Cyan was not the only one who had been spun around but he had a rather nasty collision with his shoulder against a wall.

It had been an honest mistake and Cyan hadn’t even been mad. He had even gone to an outside doctor to get an appraisal of the injury because he didn’t want to make matters worse for the kid. She has been so apologetic to all of them and more than a little shaken. Cyan got it. His first time onboard a Skeld, he had been a nervous wreck as well and he had a background in mechanical engineering before he had entered into MIRA’s training programme.

Nothing could quite prepare you with how it felt to be on an actual malfunctioning spaceship and having to fix and bring it home. It was the reason that Cyan loved this gig even if it was dreaded by so many others, be it scientists or adventurers.

He was sure this crew was no different really but he wasn’t about to let that deter him. Frankly, it was a bit of a relief to leave MIRA HQ behind for a while. There had been whispers of alien infiltrators and even if it wasn’t anything official yet, it was still cause for concern.

So Cyan was quite content with having something rather simple to focus on. Ideally, this mission would only take two days but it was still a small reprieve and something to do.

Purple had glued themselves to Cyan’s side from the moment they had boarded the Skeld but Cyan couldn’t say that he minded. Frankly, he had kept wondering if he had been neglectful in not stepping up to ask the newbie from his last mission if she had needed help but been too afraid to ask. He had just gotten so focused on his own tasks. He wanted to do better this time.

“Alright,” Green said as all of them gathered in the cafeteria.

Cyan was already loading up the task list in his suit, scanning over everything that needed to be done. He could see the list recommended for him and the overall tasks as well. It was a lot. The ship had been in a bad condition when it had been abandoned, pressed in a chase by a hostile alien ship before the old crew had vacated it.

“Who made you king?” Brown asked, having finally woken up from his snoring.

“Queen, if you want to call me that,” Green said, casually and Cyan snorted quietly. He liked Green. While it was customary to rotate your colours across missions to help furtherly obscure your identity, Cyan was sure that he had been on a mission with Green before.

Not only because too much of the data matched up with a senior on one of his first missions but also because they had distinct small Robot with them. It was called a Wall-E robot after a very old animated film.

“You’re a woman? Fuck, you’re definitely not calling the shots,” Brown said, voice raising in pitch.

“Are you saying my genitals have somehow something to do with my ability to lead?” Green asked calmly.

Brown had surely not expected such a calm reply, he sputtered a little and was clearly trying to come up with something clever but failing horribly.

Green didn’t give him a chance anyway.

“I am not in charge,” she said diplomatically. “I’m merely the one with most experience so I figured we should clear up if everyone is satisfied with their tasks. If you have one listed you do not know how to perform, you may swap it with another crewmate or ask someone more experienced for help.”

Cyan scanned through his tasks and there was two that wasn’t his favourite to do, but he could do them easily enough. Purple seemed a little uneasy, turning back and forth, and Cyan found once again that he wished they had face plates that they could actually see through instead of this opaque plating that you could only see properly out of. 

Still, he supposed he should be thankful that MIRA took the safety of their crewmates seriously. It just sucked not to be able to read anyone’s facial expressions.

“I’ll help you out with anything you need,” he whispered to Purple.

“Really?” Purple asked, grabbing onto his arm as best they could. “You promise?”

“Yeah, of course,” he confirmed and he could swear that it sounded like Purple squealed.

As Purple removed their hand, Cyan looked up to find Black looking in their direction. Black turned their attention back to Green the second Cyan caught him looking. Maybe, he had just imagined it.

No one wanted to swap tasks. Green sounded a little exasperated at that development and Cyan had a feeling that bittersweet experience told her that someone would have gotten a task they either didn’t know how to do well or do at all and in turn it would fall to the rest of the crew before they would be ready to head home.

Cyan didn’t point that out because he wouldn’t mind picking up the slack even if it lengthened their mission a little.

“What first?” Purple excitedly asked Cyan while all the crewmates began to scatter.

“Let’s head to the O2 room first. We don’t want to suddenly be unable to breathe if anybody’s oxygen tank gets busted and we can fill up it up again,” Cyan said.

“Oh, great! I have that one as well,” Purple said, clapping their hands.

It was freaking endearing and Cyan couldn’t help but have a sweet spot for the kid. They were basically a kid, jumping right from school into MIRA training. The dream to be an astronaut clearly ran strongly within them and while it wasn’t the reason Cyan liked this job, he could still feel happy just seeing someone excited.

Cleaning the O2 filter took longer than it should have done with the two of them helping each other but Cyan didn’t mind. It was rewarding showing Purple how to do it the proper way and it was something that would come in handy for them down the line. The person currently called Green had helped him out with a couple of tasks during his first run and it was only natural to pay it forward.

It seemed she also felt some responsibility for the newbie all the same because about as soon as they had finished with the filters, Cyan heard the chirps of Green’s robot arriving in the room.

“Hello little buddy,” Cyan said, crouching down. He heard footsteps approaching and assumed Green was coming up after her robot. Cyan gentle petted its little head. “You’re just as charming as I remember you. I’m going to beat you at SpaceShips this time though.”

The robot happily chirped. It was supposedly not a very intelligent robot type but Cyan wasn’t so sure about that.

He tilted his head back to ask Green, only to find that it was Black that lingered in the hallway, not Green. He felt himself flush a little.

White, Black, Pink and Brown were all people he had resolutely decided not to embarrass himself in front of. All of their files boasted of either connection or high skills and they were not the type of people you should piss off or embarrass yourself in front of.

Still, it was too late to take back the fact that he had just talked to a small robot like it could understand him, or that he was knelt down and he had petted it. It didn’t exactly scream professional.

It was impossible to see someone’s eyes through the visor but Cyan had a distinct feeling that he was being giving an either condescending or baffled stare. It was hard to tell which only based on body language.

Surprisingly, it was none of the three crewmates that broke then tension but instead the robot who opened a little panel in its chest and Green’s voice that came out of it.

“Purple, if you’re done with the O2 filter with Cyan, come over to Security and I’ll teach you a thing or two about fixing wires.”

It seemed that Green was still making it a habit of taking in the newbies. It was good to see that Cyan wouldn’t be alone in the task at least.

“Okay!” Purple shouted over Cyan’s shoulder aimed at the little Robot.

“I can hear you just fine,” Green replied back, “just follow Bub if you don’t know the way here.”

Cyan got up from his kneeled position. Black still hadn’t moved or said anything. He was just looking at the two of them. It was a little unnerving.

“Or you can look up the map in your suit, it downloaded when we all boarded,” Cyan informed Purple tapping the button on the side of his crewmate’s helmet.

“Sweet!” Purple said, still full of enthusiasm. The robot, Bub apparently, stared to moved out of the room just zooming past Black and Purple ran after it quickly. “Bye, Cyan! Bye, Black!”

“Bye,” Black said back, just a little too delayed for it to be natural.

Cyan wondered if they were feeling quite alright. Some people got really spacesick from the shuttle. He had seen it a couple of times, even if it had never affected him personally.

He was nothing if not prepared though, so he shrugged his backpack off to dig into it until he found the spacesickness pills. He jiggled the bottle a little and extended it towards Black.

“What is that?” Black asked, voice seemingly purposefully neutral.

Cyan realised that he should probably have asked first but it was too late to take it back.

“They help with err… spacesickness. I just… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to assume but you seemed a little… spaced out? I guess? I’ve seen that before, when crewmates were still reeling a little from all the bumping in the shuttle. These will help,” Cyan said definitely and extended them toward Black.

Carefully, Black’s hand extended and wrapped around the pills.

It was a pill bottle specifically designed by MIRA to be compatible with their suits, which meant you could just put them into the food compartment and it would take out the number of pills you requested and enable them to get to your mouth.

“Thank you,” Black said, words once more coming in later than what Cyan would deem socially acceptable but it was most likely the seasickness kicking in. It could be very disorienting.

“You’re welcome,” Cyan said happily before nodding and brushing past Black and out of the room.

He hoped that Black would feel better after the pills.

Black wasn’t sure what to make of it. He turned the bottle over in his gloved hand before inserting it into the food compartment in his neck. It fit perfectly and his suit came up with an alert asking him to choose the amount.

He bypassed that entirely and instead asked his suit to analyse the compartment of the pills. Black wasn’t sure how it would be possible that Cyan had already figured out his true nature but he still couldn’t rule out that this would be a very clever ploy to kill him off before he could do any damage.

However, the scan didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. It really was just a remedy to help with nausea. It was fascinating. Both that humans could have such trouble after a simple space flight but also that Cyan would just so readily hand them over.

… to help?

It did not align with what Black had normally observed from the humans on his missions. Usually they were tired, mean or grumpy. They helped each other here and there but never without it ultimately being about helping themselves.

Ah, of course, that had to be Cyan’s goal as well. He wanted Black to be able to work faster and more efficiently. It made sense now.

More sense, at least.

It still didn’t quite explain the soft cadence of Cyan’s voice. It had sounded like genuine concern. Black could not let himself dwell on that and he shifted his thoughts. He decided that if anything, it only showed that Cyan was a fool, just like any other human.

Black went back to the task at hand. Murder.

It had been difficult to isolate a victim so far. White hadn’t had better luck. This crew might not be the best but that was working against them. They clustered together in pairs or stayed around to just chitchat, instead of getting their tasks done.

With a huff of annoyance, and genuinely contemplating if himself and White couldn’t take eight humans at the same time if it came to it, he found a lucky break. He peeked into electrical and found that Yellow was alone. She was downloading data, and humming softly under her breath.

She wasn’t paying proper attention to how her download had already completed, or her general surroundings. It was perfect for an attack. Black could deal with waiting for the right moment if they were going to be rewarded for their patience like this.

He decided on a quick snap of the neck. He wasn’t even sure why. It was not his favourite method of killing but there was something that stopped him from being more brutal. Still, as soon as the kill was done, he pulled out his energy enforced stick and cut the body in half.

It was custom. The symbol of his and White’s race, a calling card. Black dragged the upper half of the body into the vent, spraying it with preservatives. Their superiors always wanted access to the deceased humans’ hands, eyes and brains. Black didn’t care what they did with them. He only cared about what he had to do on his end.

As he disappeared into the vent with half of the body, he sent an alert to White to inform him of the kill. White responded back immediately with an affirmative and two minutes later informed Black about vents connecting to MedBay being clear for passage.

White and Black didn’t exchange any words, they just nodded towards each other before going their separate ways again, pretending to do tasks along with the rest of the crew.

After his awkward encounter with Black and with Purple in safe hands for now, Cyan decided it would be a good time to try to get the reactor working. It was arguably one of his favourite jobs because he got to tinker with an actual working reactor. The Skeld ships didn’t have the most impressive reactors in all of MIRA’s arsenal but it was still neat.

It was even more neat that he quickly figured out the flaw, even if it would take some time to complete. It might be time for dinner before he could likely finish but he wanted to get started right away. No working reactor and they were not getting anywhere. It was an important thing to fix, even if it was not urgent right now.

Working with the suit was not fun but he made do. At least it was highly adaptive and when he needed it, the gloves could shrink in a little even if they fit almost too snugly on his hands like that. It reminded him of working on his grandfather’s car engine when he was barely a teenager. It had been an old wreck but his parents hadn’t thought it was the best idea for him to mess around with it. Cars were ancient and no one really used them anymore. It was one of the main reasons that Cyan had been fascinated by them.

It was important to know the past discoveries to know how to build upon that knowledge instead of just trying to invent something new and run into trouble when you didn’t have past knowledge of the past to help you.

Cyan got lost in fixing the engine, humming slightly to himself as he worked. He wasn’t even sure where he had picked up the song. It was an old classic but he hadn’t heard it in years. Maybe one of the crewmates had been playing it and he had just forgotten. If it wasn’t because his hands were occupied, he had half a mind to look up the lyrics and try to remember more than just the chorus that had gotten stuck in his head. 

Working like this felt nice, grounding in a way he had needed after his two-week accidental break. He could feel a little tension and pull in his shoulder now that he thought about it. He had promised his not MIRA approved doctor to proceeded with care and not overexert himself. It was just difficult when his mind felt clear but his body was struggling to catch up. He always hated when the two weren’t aligned.

He groaned as the pain intensified with a twist and he had to let go carefully of the delicate parts he had been rearranging. He sat back on his haunches and pressed down with one hand onto his shoulder. It was not really helping but it felt better to apply pressure for some reason.

Head no longer half inside of the reactor, he became a little more aware of his surroundings and he almost screamed when he saw something black out of the corner of his eye. He let out a yelp, twisting around and hurting his shoulder a little more before he realised it was just Black.

Just a fellow crewmate and not some hostile alien suddenly among them.

“Fuck,” he swore under his breath, hand now pressed to his chest. His shoulder felt worse too, but right now his priority was his racing heart. “You nearly killed me,” Cyan said, attempting for humour to try to alleviate the tension.

Silence for one second, two seconds, three sec-

“Sorry,” Black said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Cyan let out a bit of a pitiful laugh. “You did but it’s my own fault. I don’t pay attention to anything else when I’m focused,” he said and moved his hand back to his shoulder. He really should be careful of overworking it. He had more work to do today and tomorrow and they also needed to fly this bad boy home again. It was too soon for it to act up. It was probably too soon to be back to work if he was being honest with himself. He didn’t want to be honest with himself, not when it didn’t get him what he wanted.

“What is wrong with you?” Black asked.

He said it so bluntly that Cyan almost felt offended until he noticed that Black’s visor was tilted towards the hand Cyan had put back on his shoulder. Black’s tone might have been blunt but he probably spoke out of concern. Cyan tempered himself. It wasn’t the first time some of the crew lacked social etiquette.

“Shoulder injury,” Cyan said, not wanting to elaborate more than that. He got up from the floor but winced as he tried to straighten his back. He really should have listened when his teacher berated him about his terrible posture.

“Old or recent?” Black enquired.

Cyan wasn’t sure why he was humouring him. Maybe he just sympathised with someone awkwardly trying to make a connection. It wasn’t often that you were allowed to make friends or acquaintances up here and the trips usually too short. Still, the same people could meet up again on later jobs.

“Recent,” Cyan admitted, not wanting to lie, even if he didn’t want to elaborate.

“It’s not in your file,” Black said, and it sounded almost like an accusation.

Had Black gone through all of his file? Or was he just looking it up now to call him out on his bullshit?

“Yeah, because I didn’t report it,” he said a little sternly, in a tone that should have ended the conversation.

It didn’t.

“Did you injure it will on a mission?” Black asked, unrelenting.

“Yes, but-”

“Then you should definitely have reported it. That is the protocol,” Black said.

Cyan wondered if Black came so highly recommended because of this attention to detail and the work ethic. He seemed throughout and meticulous from first appearances alone. It was not bad qualities in a repair crewmate, even if it was coming to bite Cyan in the ass right now.

Still, unwavering loyalty could both be a good and a bad thing.

“Long story,” Cyan said hesitantly but saw that Black was still watching. Cyan let out a sigh and gave him the short version. “A newbie on my last mission made a mistake. If I had reported by injury, I could have fucked up her prospects.”

Black didn’t say anything for a moment and Cyan was sure he was being studied quite keenly.

“And you did not report it… to protect her prospects? But why? That does not serve yourself at all. If you did not report the injury you would have to pay for treatment out of pocket, yes?”

“Yes,” Cyan admitted. “I did but it’s not big deal. Please don’t go talk about it, okay?”

Black seemed to contemplate it for a moment.

“Okay,” he agreed.

“Thank you,” Cyan said, smiling and hoping it was somehow coming through in his voice.

Black was really not sure what to make of this particular crewmate. Cyan was behaving rather strangely. He had been doing so all day. Black was wondering if more humans acted like this when he hadn’t been paying attention. Black had never really made the attempt to get to know any of them. They were just a pest that needed to be exterminated. It was all he had been told from his superiors.

But hiding an injury to protect the person who had injured them? It was a ludicrous idea. If it had happened at Black’s home training facility, or worse on a mission, the alien who had made the mistake would have been severely punished. Everyone would have reported them without an ounce of hesitation.

Black had come into the reactor room with the intent to kill Cyan. Yellow’s body had still not been found and it was the perfect time to drop a second body. Cyan had been another perfect victim, absorbed in a task instead of a song, but mysteriously humming along to the same song that Yellow had been singing.

Black didn’t know what to make of that. He knew humans were fond of their music but it was just soundwaves that vibrated in a way that was supposedly pleasant. Black didn’t get the hype.

As Black had crept into the room, getting perfectly within kill shot without even being detected, he had felt the bottle of pill still in the compartment of his neck. It stopped him short in his tracks for some unknown reason.

He still didn’t have an explanation for it.

It had left him, standing and staring until Cyan sat back a little and tried to alleviate what seemed to be pain in his shoulder. He had startled when he had noticed Black and it had been another perfect opportunity. Cyan had been crouched down in the corner and unable to get to the exit.

Black still didn’t strike. Instead, he had found himself once more engaged in a ridiculous conversation.

And even more ridiculously, Black found that he wanted to continue the conversation! This was entirely unlike him. He was supposed to be focus at the task at hand – sabotaging the ship and killing the crew.

Before he could to either, the comms was opened with an alarm sound.

“There’s a motherfucking body in Electrical,” Brown reported on their shared line. “And it’s cut in goddamn half!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? I'm going to have a lot fun with this. I've got the next chapter ready and it's going up next week, I'm going to tentatively try for weekly updates but I won't make any set promises since I'm doing loads of things in November. Please let me know if you liked this first chapter in the comments below!


	2. Murderer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cyan doesn't want to go see the dead body but his curiosity gets the better of him. In the meantime, Black is a little confused why he finds the urge to talk more with Cyan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Discovery of a body torn in half, slight paranoia and fear

Cyan wanted to laugh. It was like a bad tick. He wanted to laugh in horrible situations that caught him unaware. Right now, he was sure it was mostly because his brain was trying to find a way to cope with this scenario. It was easier to imagine that it was someone playing a horrible joke on all of them.

The comms were instantly flooded with too many voices and not for the first time, Cyan wished that he could have pulled off his helmet and gotten a chance to breathe. He knew it wasn’t possible, because he would suffocate in the ship with its current state but he felt trapped inside of his helmet.

There was no gotcha-moment coming up, which Cyan realistically knew. It wasn’t something that you’d joke around with, even if you were an asshole. It was simply not something you did. You didn’t joke about murder and dismemberment. Cyan felt his stomach turn.

Black was standing still next to him. Almost inhumanely still but Cyan was kind of glad to see that he wasn’t the only one who had been stunned into silence when he could hear so many other of their crewmates shouting in his ear. Blue and Red were the loudest, voices carrying through as they insisted that it couldn’t be true, claiming that they were coming to electrical to verify it. Cyan caught Purple mutter something in a hushed scared voice but they were drowned out. Green called for all of the to come to the cafeteria so they could regroup and figure out what was going on.

Cyan knew he needed to see it with his own eyes. His brain was not accepting it. His feet started to move, back out from the reactor room and past the lower engine until he walked into the hallway outside of electrical. He could hear voices inside already, Blue, Red and Brown at least.

He heard footsteps behind him and saw Black had followed by closely, even if he didn’t say anything either. Two minds, one thought, Cyan thought quietly to himself and pushed open the door.

Brown was watching against the wall, while Red and Blue were bickering back and forth, something about this not being the first dead body that they had seen. It sounded like lies, disguised by fear.

Cyan immediately wished that he hadn’t walked into that room. He had always been too curious for his own good, his parents had told him when he was growing up. It had led him to tinkering with any technology he could get his hands on and running off to the woods and later far corners of spaceships to explore. He was thirsty for knowledge and new things had scared and excited him in equal measure.

He had never seen anything like this and he immediately turned around, almost barrelling into Black. He only ended up bumping shoulders, and muttered a soft “sorry” before he walked back out.

Purple and Pink were lurking in the hallway, looking like they weren’t sure if they should go in or not.

“Don’t go in there,” Cyan said and felt like he had bile in his throat.

“But-” Pink started to argue but Cyan cut her off.

“Do not go in there. I mean it,” he said with a tone that couldn’t be argued with. Both Purple and Pink shut up.

Yellow had been cut in half. It was the only way to describe it. Cyan’s mind was instantly trying to identify what kind of weapon would even have the force to cut cleanly through both spacesuit and a human body like that. It would have a more comforting and purely scientific pondering, if it hadn’t been triggered by such a horrifying visual. The spine had been sticking slightly out of the body, like it had been cut clean through. Cyan’s mind was full of question even as he felt queasy. Where was the other half of the body? How had someone done that?

_Who_ could have done that?

A murderer lurking on the ship somehow? A hostile alien race? It shouldn’t be possible. They had scanned the ship as they had arrived and it hadn’t shown any lifeforms inside or attached to it. The Skeld’s outward sensors hadn’t been broken and the crew should have been alerted if something had somehow managed to climb aboard after them.

Cyan did not like what options that left them with.

Green’s voice came through – louder than anyone’s else. “Meeting in the Cafeteria now. Don’t make me send my robot to retrieve you all.”

Cyan stumbled a little, and Purple moved out to support him, even as they also looked like they might faint any moment. They hadn’t even seen the body but if Cyan had anything to say about that then they never would. No one should have to see that if you asked him. It was horrifying to see a life ended like that.

Black had seen this reaction before too. It was almost always like this. The disbelief was palpable in the air from the crewmates whenever they discovered the first body. They couldn’t believe it, even if they had seen it with their own eyes.

They were stupid, or misinformed. Black and White’s race had been taking down many repair missions like this. Surely, the humans had to know that their crews and their ships were being killed, destroyed and stolen. It was naïve not to expect it.

There was a chance that the crew hadn’t been informed. Black had certainly not found any information about it in the data that they had hacked. The crew had never been warned about possible alien imposters.

Black shouldn’t care, but still he found himself what that meant. He dismissed the thought as soon as it had come. The answer was obvious upon just a little though – the humans in charge did simply not care about risking lower-ranked humans’ lives.

Only one human intrigued him.

Cyan was a curious one. The way his body had tensed up when he had seen Black’s murder handywork had been unsettling to witness. Even so, when Cyan had bumped into Black and even sounding out of his mind distraught, he had still apologised for the tiny inconvenience. Now he was in the hallway trying to keep two crewmates from seeing the carness.

At Green’s angry call, the seven of them walked together in a group, leaving the body behind. Most of the crewmates were looking around like they expected something to jump at them from the walls. If only they knew that they were walking alongside the murderer. It gave Black a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. They didn’t suspect anything. At least not yet.

They would later. They would all turn on each other and sometimes it was hard not to get targeted and blamed already but both Black and White were good at talking and manipulating when it was required.

“Sit,” Green ordered, as the group walked in.

White had been the only one who had come when Green had first called them. Black almost wanted to send a chastising message, since every other human crewmate had ignored the call from Green and instead gone to see the body themselves. Not following the crowd was a type of failure on these types of missions.

“Who made you the boss?” Blue grumbled, grabbing onto his chair and very possibly shooting green a glare under his helmet.

It was such a pity thing to talk about right now. Humans and their quirks.

“There has literally just been a murder,” Cyan said, voice surprisingly hard even as it sounded like he might be tearing up. “Focus on what matters.”

No one argued with that. Blue grabbed his chair and sat down, even if he grumpily crossed his arms.

“Yellow is dead, I presume?” Green stated. “And you found her, Brown?”

“Yeah, I was just coming into electrical to fix some wires and next thing I know, I’m stumbling over half a body.”

“Cut in half with almost striking precision? Spine cut clean through?” Green asked.

“How did you know that?” Red asked in an accusing voice. “You did not go to see the body!”

It was always nice when humans put their own foot in their mouth. It was nice to play this game when you had a scapegoat. Getting the humans to turn on each other was almost as fun as killing them.

However, Green said something that Black hadn’t been expecting.

“I’ve heard of this before, which is how I know. It had been happing for a year, maybe more. It’s difficult to tell since hardly any ships were this happen have the crew return safely.”

Green was correct, even if Black wondered how she knew. The aliens had a success rate around 97% of all missions. Only a handful made it back with any crew alive after they had successfully ousted the imposters hiding among them.

“Were you one?” Blue asked.

“No, but an old friend of mine was and she made it explicitly clear that MIRA isn’t telling us everything. She wasn’t allowed to speak about it but one night she broke that and shared the stories of the severed bodies of their crewmates. The fear they had all felt. How hardly any of them made it out alive. Just two crewmates.”

“MIRA knows about this? We were never given any explicit information! It should come with warnings for missions like this, if they know people get murdered,” Cyan said, shaking with rage.

This all felt like a very bad dream. None of this was supposed to be happening. It was supposed to be a simple repair mission. Get in, fix the Skeld and go back to base. Clean and simple. Cyan had done it multiple times already. He had found a routine.

“Most of the time, they only know about the missing crews,” Green said, voice steady even talking about this. “I’ve been in the game for a long time. We have never been given all the information. We are workers, and dispensable to them if need be.”

Cyan felt sick to his stomach.

“You can’t be serious; this is a violation of our contracts. We have to get back! Immediately,” Pink said.

But they couldn’t. They didn’t have a way out. Cyan was about to explain it but Brown beat him to it.

“How?” Brown said with a dry chuckle. “The shuffle cannot be deployed from the Skeld. It doesn’t have the proper launching equipment. It’s just a glorified sleeping quarters right now, and the Skeld won’t fly properly until we fix everything that it wrong with it. We’re stuck until we fix it, idiots.”

He wouldn’t quite have phrased it like that but the information was sound. They were stuck. They could not fly away and they could not communicate with headquarters until they fixed the ship either.

“But that is not the worst part,” Green said.

“It gets worse?” Purple asked in a small voice, leaning slightly into Cyan’s side.

This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair to any of them, but least of all a complete newbie on their first mission. Cyan wished he could do anything.

“The worst thing is who murdered the crewmates,” Green said, looking around the crew sitting at the table. “It was an imposter. A hostile alien posing as crew.”

The reaction was instantaneous. Everyone looked around at each other. Cyan felt like his whole body was frozen. He had known it was one of the only options. He had already figured out that no one but the people on the shuttle had entered, but it was something else to be confronted with the cold and harsh reality of the statement and to look around the table to see the creation of his fellow crewmate, one of whom were faking it.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Brown said, suddenly defensive. “Are you saying one of us killed Yellow?”

“I bet it was you,” Red said instantly, pointing at Brown. “You cut her in half!”

“I literally found the body!” Brown protested.

“And the killer always returns to the scene of the crime!” Blue chimed in, now also pointing at Brown.

More voices kicked up, louder and louder with Pink joining in as well. The four crewmates shouted while the other five crewmates watched silently.

“Enough,” White said all of a sudden. “This shouting isn’t getting us anywhere. How sure are you about this information, Green?”

“Most positive,” Green said. “At least one of us is an imposter and a murderer.”

“But… who?” Purple asked, looking around at their crewmates with terror. It was clear from their body language alone and Cyan once more wanted to wrap them up in a hug and offer a word of comfort but now they were leaning back in their chair and hugging themselves instead of leaning into Cyan’s side.

Everyone was the enemy now.

The emergency meeting dragged on for an hour while Cyan’s headache grew. They were recounting their steps since they had arrived, vouching for each other’s locations and tasks that they had done. It was one big mess because almost everyone had passed each other or been together for a while before splitting up. Pink was the one who people had seen the least and she rather desperately told that it was because she was just slacking off on the job and not out murdering someone. It was a poor excuse but it was a plausible one with her general attitude.

Cyan had told how he had been together with both Purple and Black at different times, which they both confirmed. But even so, he hadn’t been together with them at all times. They could technically have had time to commit a murder.

Someone had.

They couldn’t figure out who and they were not getting anywhere other than Blue and Red to declare being each other’s mortal enemies and vowing to trail each other and watch out for suspicious behaviour.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Cyan muttered, but then cleared his voice and repeated it stronger. “Hey, we can’t just stay here and talk. We don’t know enough to figure out who might be an imposter but us all sitting here and talking can only be what the imposter wants us to do. We’re losing valuable time. We need to do our tasks, fix the Skeld and get the hell home where a proper investigation can be done.”

“If we get that far,” Brown said, sarcastically. “Who’s to say that we’re not all dead before that, smartass?”

Cyan bristled at Brown’s tone but he held his tongue. He was trying to get them to stop arguing, not pour more fuel onto the fire.

“Cyan is right,” Green chimed in. “We cannot let this derail us or we will be stuck here until we are all killed either way. We must proceed with our tasks and fixing this ship. Stay in pairs or groups and keep an eye out. It will be slower work but progress all the same.”

Not everyone seemed satisfied with that but it wasn’t like anyone else had a better idea.

No one made a move for a bit. Cyan let out a sigh inside of his helmet before turning to Purple.

“Want to head to the reactor with me? I was mostly done with the repairs,” he asked.

Purple looked about ready to refuse to go anywhere with anyone but after a beat of hesitation, they nodded. It got everyone else moving too, splitting into small groups as well.

Purple walked slightly behind Cyan as they walked to the reactor and Cyan couldn’t shut off the nagging thought that it was odd that they were walking like that. It was too hard to force away the images of a knife sinking into his flesh any moment.

He couldn’t know but he just hoped that he hadn’t misjudged Purple. The newbie innocent appearance could be a trick. Still, Cyan prided himself on having good instincts and frankly, he had nothing else to lean on.

He knelt down at the reactor and resumed the work he had been doing before. He tried to ignore how his hands shook as he fiddled with the finer points of the reactor.

Pairing up with White would have been too obvious, so instead he was stuck with Brown. He did not like Brown. He was loud, crass and generally an asshole. Right now, he was sprouting some bullshit about Green being unfit to take on the leadership role despite her experience and how he was already sure that it was Red or Blue or both of them that were the imposters and they were just putting on a show of not getting along.

Black said very little to that, but Brown kept sprouting bullshit all the same. It would have been so easy to kill him but Black retrained himself. It would be too suspicious when too many crewmates had seen them walk off together.

It was fine. They could sabotage and delay. They would get all the humans, one by one, as long as they played well and patiently. They were known to be patient and calculating. It came as a second nature to them.

As did approaching situations in a logical fashion and only obtaining relevant information and yet Black couldn’t help but think back to the remarks made by one specific crew member. Cyan had made accurate assessments when he had spoken. He had not said much, compared to some of the others but he had always spoken eloquently and focus, showing his sharp wit.

Black was almost impressed, even if he wouldn’t have minded if they had delayed the bickering a little longer by mindless discussion that wasn’t getting them anywhere. It was the perfect delay tactic and great place for the humans to sow seeds of doubt in each other.

Humans could be so fragile like that, just a little push, a little notion in their head and it would bury and fester. It was always too easy to turn them against each other.

Pretending to do tasks with Brown was a special kind of hell since the crewmate never shut up. Black almost considered actually doing the tasks just to keep his hands occupied, or taking over from Brown who was doing a poor job of it. Next time, Black would make sure to pair up with someone more interesting.

Like Cyan maybe.

Black knew that this spark of interest was dangerous, if he had let himself acknowledge it but for now, he just pushed it down and away. He was a perfectly trained killing machine and those did not get fascinated with silly humans.

“Do you want to learn how to fix it?” Cyan asked Purple after they had been pacing around the room for ten minutes straight while Cyan was quietly working.

The reactor room wasn’t that big. Purple had alternated with walking from side to side to walking in a little circle. Pacing was something that came quite naturally when you were anxious and Cyan didn’t blame Purple for their current state of mind. However, the constant patter of their feet made it just a tad difficult to concentrate.

“Huh?” Purple asked and came to a blessed stop.

The silence was nice for once. Cyan knew he could just turn off his audio receptors but that would probably be a horrible idea given that one of their fellow crewmates could be a coldblooded alien murderer.

Purple hadn’t taken a stab at him yet though, so he felt fairly calm about that. Unless the impostor was smart enough to recognise that it would be stupid to kill your buddy. They probably were.

“Do you want to learn? About the reactor? For future missions?” Cyan elaborated.

“How can you even focus on the future?” Purple asked, stepping closer and then hesitating, like they were scared to come closer.

Cyan wanted to say that they weren’t the murderer but he doubted anyone would believe a sentence like that. It was exactly something that the real murderer would say.

“We have to,” Cyan said, and he didn’t get into how he was pushing the shock and terror in front of him. He wasn’t trying to think about how the half-body was probably already starting to decompose slightly even if the toxic air would slow down the process, or how the other half of the body had to be stashed somewhere on the Skeld, unless it had been pushed into space. However, if that was the case, someone should have heard the door open though, since it was not a quiet noise.

Cyan tried to pull his head away from the speculation.

“How do you even know how to do that?” Purple asked, and crept a little closer. “You’re not even using the manual they told us to use.”

“I studied it,” Cyan said. “Kind of. Mechanical engineering and I taught myself all I would need to know about a Skeld ship. Here, I’ll teach you some basics.”

“I mean…” Purple said and looked like they were about to refuse. They looked back out to the hallway, in direction of electrical but then they seemed to make a decision and sank down to their knees next to Cyan.

There was a spike of fear for just a moment, but nothing happened and so Cyan focused on the task at hand. He had always been good at that. He would focus in and just not be able to do anything else. Teaching it to someone else helped even more, and Purple turned out to pick up pretty quickly. Most of the work was already done, but Cyan still went over the process and had Purple help out with the last bit.

They were done within the hour.

“Okay, where to next?” Purple asked and looked at Cyan expectedly. It was almost laughable that anyone would deem Cyan fit for any kind of leadership, but nevertheless Purple was looking at him like that.

He didn’t like being settled with that responsibility. It was better and safer to just do your own thing, stay in your own lane with your head down like he had done most of his life. On top of that, this was an unprecedented situation. He very much did not want to be in charge of any part. Green with her calm levelheadedness or even Brown with his bombastic attitude could take that role for all he cared.

“Let’s go swipe our cards at admin. It’s usually something we’d do when we first arrive on a mission. It’s a checking in measure and it’s important that we do it on the first day at least.”

Purple started frantically patting themselves down, which did look rather hilarious in the thick spacesuit. “I don’t have mine!”

“Here,” Cyan said and clicked a nearly invisible button on Purple’s shoulder. A little compartment opened and the card slid out.

“Oh, right. Forgot about that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Cyan said and lead them back into the hallway.

It was shorter to go through storage but that meant walking past electrical and Cyan didn’t want to go anywhere near that room. It was be a nightmare to have to go in there and fix the wiring tomorrow.

They took the long way around and Purple seemed to let out a breath of relief as they turned left instead of right. Cyan knew that the two of them weren’t the only ones who would be freaking out. Every crewmember would be. Well, every real crewmember would be. If Cyan let himself dwell on this, he was going to internally combust.

They passed Green, Pink and White fixing wires in the cafeteria and Cyan could have sworn that a chill went through him as he passed. It was something in the pit of his stomach that made him feel uneasy.

Cyan started to walk a little faster, and Purple followed suit. Admin was empty when they entered but it still didn’t feel safe. It felt like things might be ready to jump out of the shadows at them.

Cyan popped his card out as well and the two of them walked over to the scanner. It was one of the simplest tasks any repair crewmember but it was still a vital one. Even when a Skeld ship was in poor condition, the technology was built with a failsafe that still let them read the cards back at headquarters. The present crewmembers would be given authorisation to fly the ship home once all elements had been fixed.

It was the simplest job indeed but still one that Cyan didn’t like. He could never get the damn swipe to work. It always just beeped at him and told him that it was either too slow or too fast. He had even gotten his card replaced a couple of missions back, since he thought it might be slightly damaged or bent. It seemed like a likely cause that he could not work it.

Next mission, he had struggled with his new card that he had taken extra care to slide into the sleeve pocket. He had decided that the scanners on Skeld ships just weren’t for him. He didn’t agree with them and swiping his card was always a frustration.

“How do we swipe it? This way?” Purple asked, walked up to the machine and swiped it through with ease, even if it was their first time doing it.

The treacherous machine beeped in acceptance and Cyan glared at it. Maybe it was just conspiring against him. It was a possibility.

“Yes,” Cyan said, not able to keep his voice completely steady. A little annoyance slipped through. “Just like that.”

Black’s hearing was quite superior to that on humans usually but with all this stupid spacesuit on, it was only slightly enhanced. Still, he managed to pick up on voices in admin as him and Brown started walking up from storage.

Black wasn’t sure was compelled him to pop into the room. Impulse, perhaps, but that in itself was strange. It wasn’t something he had indulged in often. It was something that had been trained away from them.

“Oh fuck, right, the goddamn cards,” Brown swore behind him and then pushed past Black properly into the room.

If there had not been two witnesses, Black was seriously considering breaking through the secret cut of his spacesuit and impale Brown right then and there. No one touched him like that. It was pure luck that Cyan and Purple were both standing in the room, both watching with caution radiating from their bodies.

“Move over,” Brown said almost shoving Purple and Cyan out of the way.

The urge to murder grew a little stronger when Purple moved back too fast, almost crashing into Cyan and making them both stumble a little. This was what humans did. They prioritized themselves and didn’t care who they had to shove out of the way. It was why they were taking over the freaking galaxy relentlessly.

Brown swiped his card, and then started to march out of the room. Black knew that they should be sticking together. They had been partnered up for their own safety. Brown didn’t seem to care much, and well, Black knew he had nothing to fear.

He stayed in admin watching Cyan and Purple watch him.

“Shouldn’t you go after him?” Purple asked a little nervously and looked into the hallway.

Black just shrugged. “I’m not the boss of him. He can do what he wants.”

“Still,” Cyan said a little cautiously. “You should both be careful. Being alone is not a good move right now when we don’t know who to watch out for.”

“What if you get partnered up with the supposed murderer?” Black asked, because there was something in Cyan’s tone that just made him want to talk. Want to argue just to see what kind of reply would come out.

It wasn’t a feeling that Black was familiar with and it was intriguing. It felt a little like playing with fire. It was a good thing that Black had mastered the fire throwing during his training.

Purple flinched visible at Black’s question while Cyan just went physically still.

“Then it would still be dumb for the murderer to murder the one person that everyone saw them walk off with,” Cyan said.

“Yeah!” Purple chimed in, a little too loudly, like they were just relieved that Cyan had spoken up and pretty much confirmed that they were safe in teams of two. They weren’t but it was adorable that these humans thought so.

“You consider the murderer intelligent?” Black asked, still feeling that urge to prod. It would have been safer to leave it alone but he couldn’t help himself.

“Considering they are aboard the ship, very likely disguised to perfection and able to carry off a hit on one of us without getting caught… then yes, I do,” Cyan said and almost said it like a challenge.

Black should really be backing off but the reactions were just a little too sweet. He couldn’t walk off, didn’t want to chase after Brown anyway, so he walked in and pulled his card from the shoulder compartment and swiped it through the scanner.

It beeped in acceptance.

The way Cyan was watching him, it felt a little bit like a test. As if they could have been exposed by a simple thing like this busted-up scanner. It wouldn’t expose Black. The forgeries of their spacesuit and their gear was perfect. They were perfect replicas and it had never been the thing that would get them caught.

“Now you,” Black said, nodding his head forward a little and even though Cyan and Purple couldn’t see it through the visor, he smiled. Flashed his sharp teeth. His species might be shapeshifters and they might need the bodies of humans to take a form close to them the first time, but after that things worked different. They could expand and imitate, to perfection if they wanted. It just took more concentration to make a perfect replica. It was easier to leave the minor bits closer to their real shape, hence the teeth.

Cyan seemed on edge and Black was sure that the guy was glaring at him, even if he couldn’t see his eyes either. A shame really. He had a feeling that it was one heck of a glare when it managed to come out mostly even with the eyes not visible. 

Cyan swiped the card. It beeped red, told him to go slower.

A grunt of annoyance as Cyan swiped the card again, and the machine told him to go faster now.

A third time. Fail again. A fourth time. Failed once more.

Purple took a bit of a step back, suddenly appearing cautious of Cyan. Black almost wanted to laugh. It was quite adorable that the youngest crewmember was worrying about their new friend being the imposter and not the alien imposter who was also standing in the room.

“Why is this always broken for me?” Cyan muttered, clearly frustrated and having two sets of eyes on him didn’t seem to help him focus.

Black wanted to push the human a little. Just to see when he would snap and break and get frustrated. Angry humans were fun and you would only have the fun that you created yourself on missions like this. White would have called it childish and asked why he was behaving like a newly hatched blob.

Black found that he didn’t care as much about that as he should have.

“It worked fine for all of the rest of us,” Black said, taunting bleeding into his voice. He had learned how to push humans’ buttons well.

“I know,” Cyan said and swiped it again. Too fast once more.

“Maybe you’re the impostor then,” Black said and at his word Purple gasped and stepped back. It was getting harder and harder not to laugh.

Black had expected Cyan to deny it. Maybe frantically, since he definitely wasn’t the murderous alien they were all looking for. It was Black’s experience that people didn’t take well to being called something they weren’t. It was amusing trying to see them fall apart to try to explain.

But Cyan’s voice was steady when he replied after a moment’s hesitation.

“I always struggle with this dumb card, but I can see how it would be suspicious given the current circumstances,” he said.

It was not the common response that Black had expected. Cyan was considering his words before he spoke. He didn’t just jump to conclusions, either defending him or throwing the accusation back.

Interesting.

“But you’re not, right? The killer?” Purple asked, still keeping their distance.

“I’m not,” Cyan said, voice almost too soft to be heard. “Just clumsy with stuff like this. But… don’t trust anyone who says they aren’t the imposter among us. Anyone would say that, both the ones who are innocent and the ones who are guilty. To determine who is whom you’d have to be able to figure out who is lying.”

“But we can do that, right?” Purple pushed again. It was like they desperately wanted Cyan to give them all the answers.

“Humans are horrible at telling who is lying,” Cyan replied. “There’s been studies about it before. Usually we’d get like maybe 50-60% right, which is just a little better than what we should get if guessing randomly. It’s too big of a margin of failure.”

“So, you’re saying we’re screwed?” Purple asked.

“A bit, so we should just focus on just getting our tasks done,” Cyan said and tried to swipe the card again. Too slow now.

“You’re doing a great job of that,” Black said, still wanting to tease Cyan. He wanted to see him lose his cool. No one could be this patient and kind all the time. He would have a limit too.

“I’m aware I’m struggling, thank you,” Cyan said, a bit of bite to his voice, but still controlled.

Black considered to keep taunting him, but instead he stepped closer and closer until he was right in Cyan’s space. Cyan who still hadn’t stepped back, even as Black was sure he caught a scent of fear coming from him. It must be a pretty big spike if it could go through his suit, even if emotional reactions didn’t move through fabric like other smells.

“Here,” Black said, setting his hand down on top of Cyan’s. “You’re unfocused, either rushing or going agonisingly slow. It’s hitting a rhythm. Smooth.”

Black moved Cyan’s hand, holding the card but not having propped it into the machine. Black showed him how to move it back and forth a couple of times at the right pace. He was kind of glad that White wasn’t here to see this. He would get written up for a violation like this. It was their job to tear the humans apart both physically and mentally. Helping them was entirely out of the question, unless it was part of a greater scheme that still ended with them ripped apart.

Cyan was fairly sure he had stopped breathing as Black had stepped closer. He had frozen up, for the first time in his life felt like when you saw a front light of a ship come barrelling towards your cargo vessel. It had happed too many times with racers not caring about cargo routes and crossing them without an ounce of respect that they could kill someone.

It was a danger that shouldn’t be happening but it did. When rich, careless pilots decided that it didn’t matter where they flew since their race ships had an impenetrable shield.

It was possible not the best metaphor but that was how it felt like. Something about Black just made Cyan feel like he was about to come barrelling into him with too much force and that Black would come out of the crash unscathed while Cyan was left torn in half.

Purple was still in the room, watching with fear and suspicion. Cyan couldn’t blame them. He had meant what he said that no one could trust each other fully. It was terrifying to think about that.

Maybe, it was that sense of self-preservation that told Cyan not to let Black get too close. He doubted that he was about to get gutted down in front of another crewmate but he couldn’t be sure.

When Black simply took Cyan’s hand and showed him the tempo he needed to swipe at, it felt almost intimate and Cyan couldn’t help but miss the touch a little as soon as Black retreated and stepped back.

He couldn’t actually feel the touch through their spacesuits, not properly, but it had still felt like a real touch. It had thrown him a little for a loop, just as Black offering help all of a sudden. He had seemed more into taunting Cyan and now he was suddenly helping? It was weird.

Then again, this whole situation was weird.

Cyan swiped the card, trying hard to match the pace he had been showed and it beeped in acceptance.

“No way,” Cyan muttered to himself, hopefully low enough that it wouldn’t be picked up by the other crewmates. He swiped in the air a couple of more times, trying to memorise the motion and the pace. It would come in handy if he made it out of here. He had to kept thinking that he would or he would just have to crawl up in a ball and cry.

“You did it!” Purple said, jumping closer and holding onto Cyan’s shoulders now.

It was as if the simple card swipe had cleared him from all suspicion. It was not the case at all really, but it was still nice that Purple didn’t seem terrified of him.

“Thank you,” Cyan told Black sincerely. “Thank you for helping.”

Those words seemed to stun Black a little. He paused, just like he had done before. Maybe he was just choosing his words carefully. Cyan could relate to that.

“You’re welcome,” Black said after the moment dragged on just long enough for it to start to feel awkward. “It was nothing.”

Cyan shrugged. “It wasn’t nothing to me. I appreciate it and I-”

A mechanical sound for a beat and then everything went dark. Purple clutched onto Cyan’s immediately and he kind of want to shake them off but instead they just stood pressed together. 

“What happened?” Purple whispered.

Cyan could barely see them, even if they were right next to him. He couldn’t see Black who had just been a couple of steps away from them. The colour of his spacesuit probably didn’t help with the visibility either.

“The lights just went out. The emergency lights,” Cyan answered into the darkness around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we have the second chapter! I hope you liked this, even if there wasn't murder this time around. Thank you so much for the people who've commented on last chapter, your encouragement were so lovely to hear and it made me even more excited about this fic!
> 
> I'm going to hope to update it every Tuesday!


	3. Outcast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is never a good thing when you have to stumble around on a spaceship in the dark. It's even worse when there is a murderous imposter lurking among you. Still, Cyan, Black and Purple have to do something because staying put in the darkness isn't an option either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Sexism, murder, fear of being killed

Sabotage was another fun thing to do on these missions. Watch as the crewmates fell into chaos as they couldn’t see or they couldn’t communicate. Locking doors so they had to run the long way around. It was all just a game and it meant that they were left vulnerable. So easy to kill.

White liked the game even more than Black.

Stack kill, he would say almost playfully when he got all of the humans together in one spot and managed to kill standing just close to them in the dark. It meant that it was impossible to cleanly separate and store away the upper body like they were told to do but it wasn’t required to do it with all of their kills anyway. Sometimes crewmates were ejected into space framed as imposters and their bodies lost to the cold vastness. It was all good as long as they did bring back some brains, eyes and hands.

A stack kill was undoubtedly what was about to happen. Everyone would rush to electrical to fix it and White would show up too. Inconspicuous but deadly.

“We should head to electrical to get the power back on,” Cyan said, hesitantly.

“How? I can barely see two feet in front of me!” Purple exclaimed and clung onto Cyan.

Black could still see it all. His eyes could adapt to much more than humans could. It wasn’t hard to see through the darkness, but he knew they could only see their very immediate surrounding thanks to the internal lighting in their suits. So easy to kill, stumbling around blindly.

It was almost pitiful. Black could probably try to get a kill in now, maybe catch both of them. He didn’t try.

“But we have to get the power back on. We can’t work like this and it leaves us way too vulnerable,” Cyan said, “which is probably why the murderer did it.”

“What are you saying?” Purple asked, still holding tightly onto Cyan. They seemed to have forgotten their past reservations and they were now looking for Cyan to be their saviour.

Oddly enough, Black could see the appeal. There was something about Cyan that inspired confidence.

“Cyan is saying that this is all a trap,” Black clarified, almost impressed that Cyan figured it out this fast. Most humans did eventually but if they hesitated to run off to fix an emergency issue immediately it was more likely because of fear than reason. When humans were afraid, reason usually left them all together.

“Exactly,” Cyan said, “but we would still have to go. Or someone will. I’ll check if the comms work on the emergency line.”

Black couldn’t let that happen. In the darkness, it was all too easy to walk over to the wall and let the malware in his hand run rampant through the system. The comms went out completely dead on all lines just as easily as the power had been cut. It was a total malfunction and not something they usually needed to do, since most crewmates forgot about the back-up line that ran on a different system.

“They’re not responding either,” Cyan said. “They should. It’s supposed to be safe-guarded. This is… not good.”

“What should we do?” Purple asked, voice trembling. Black could taste the fear from them. It was delicious and a little tempting.

“Lights first, because navigating will be a nightmare without it,” Cyan said.

It was the logical step, since they had also been disabled first but Black didn’t like the idea of Cyan or Purple falling victim to White’s stack kill strategy. Anyone could die in those.

“But that’s where the body is…” Purple said in a small voice.

Such a trivial thing to be afraid of a corpse. Humans were funny.

“No, remember? Blue and Red said that they had move it to MedBay and covered it up. It should be… okay,” Cyan said, even if he didn’t sound very thrilled at the prospect of going to electrical.

Black made a decision blatantly ignoring the consequences of his mission. It was the first time he ever did that.

“The two of you head to comms to get them back up and running. We’re not far from that room. I’ll go check out electrical and see if the others need help,” Black said.

He thought that Cyan and Purple would be pleased with that division. It kept the two of them together and less vulnerable and their task closer to hand.

“But then you’ll be on your own,” Cyan said and he didn’t sound happy about that. No, he sounded _worried._ “It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t do that,” Cyan added.

That emotion in Cyan’s voice was not one that Black was sure a human had ever expressed towards him. Concern? It was genuine concern for someone else, even when his own life was in danger. For Black’s life specifically.

It made Black feel weird.

“I will be fine,” Black said, not wanting to evaluate what was happening with him right now. “Go fix comms now,” he said in a voice that couldn’t be argued with.

He slipped away into the darkness easily enough, moving faster since he could still see. Cyan called out for him but Black didn’t let that halt his steps, even if Cyan’s call did tug on something in his chest.

“Can’t we just stay here?” Purple asked, after they had seen Black disappear in to the darkness.

More like they had _heard_ it. Cyan hadn’t been able to make him out since the lights had gone out. This was of no use. Black should be fine. Probably. It was a short trip and people had probably already arrived at electrical. Getting all the lights back on could easily be job for several people, since they needed to figure out how to kick life into an emergency generator that shouldn’t even be able to give out in the first place. But there was also a strength in numbers. Black wouldn’t be on his own for long.

Cyan tried to ignore that it probably took but a second for the imposters to kill. Efficient and terrifying.

“We have to move to communications,” Cyan said and then moved Purple’s hands off his arm but after a moment of consideration, he took Purple’s hand in his instead. The young crewmate was clearly still worried and he didn’t want to get separated from them in the dark. “We stay close and we move slow.”

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. None of this is okay. We’re all going to die! There is a murderous alien aboard! HOW ARE YOU SO CALM?”

“I’m not,” Cyan argued with a snort before he began leading them out of admin. He had a history of jumping at the shadows and now everything around them felt like the shadows. He was terrified, even if he was putting up a brave face.

“You are, you and Black both. Why? How!? I’m so scared I don’t even know what to do with myself.”

“We all handle fear differently,” Cyan said, holding onto his calm tone, even if he had to do it so tightly that it felt like everything was building within him, bound to snap and combust. “I’ve got training in pushing shit like anxiety in front of me. It’s not a solution but it’s a temporary way to keep moving. Right now, we can’t all be freaking out.”

They made it through the storage area and into the hall that lead to communications. This darkness was seriously freaking him out but he took one steady step after another. Just keep moving. Stopping was not possible. They’d drown. Dead in the water and too easy to strike.

Stepping into a pitch-black room was not fun and it was only when Cyan stepped into it that he realised Black had made a mistake sending them here. Cyan had made a mistake in listening to him. He hadn’t even thought about it before complying.

When he looked at the computers, it was clear to see that it was really the emergency generator that had been cut off from even the emergency lights and they had no hopes of fixing the comms before it was back on.

Comms might have been able to work on their own, because of the proximity feature in the suits but fixing the whole communication station was another matter. It required power to go into the programme on the screen and be able to read the previous wave of communication to match up the scrambled one.

Cyan frowned at the dark screen that was very much without power right now. They couldn’t do anything here. Had Black made a simple mistake or was there another reason?

It was almost too perfect.

Black arrived to see that White, Brown, Pink, Green, Red and Blue were all gathered in electrical trying to get the emergency generator back on and adjust the switches for the lights.

So many potential killers that it would be impossible to cast blame properly. It would only have been slightly better if the last two crewmates had been here as well. Black wasn’t sure what that meant that he was kind of glad that those two were out of harm’s way for now.

As Black slid in and tried to offer his help, he gave a slight nod to White that no one else would be able to see. It was a confirmation that they were watching out for each other. Black felt on edge during kills like this because they were too exposed for his tastes but he didn’t protest with White’s approach. This was fine. White liked the risk of the kill. Thrived on it.

The thrill of the kill was a big reason that people from their home planet signed up to go on these missions. To Black, it had always been more about the duty of things than the thrill. It was something he had been trained to do and something he had to fulfil to help fight back against the persistent and relentless race that was slowly taking over the galaxy. It was the right thing to do. He had been a strong and capable fighter and intelligent so he had been snapped up for service when he was just a young blob.

Blue and Red were next to each other bickering like crazy. Black wondered how long it would go before those two tore off each other’s helmets. Green was the closest to White right now but she had that little robot watching her very keenly, even in the dark. Black wasn’t sure how much it could pick up in this kind of darkness or if it was recording but it was a threat to their plans.

White seemed to follow’s Black’s gaze and noticed the little robot. Black saw how White’s target shifted to the crewmate on the other side of White, who was Pink. Black stepped forward a little, fake accidentally nudging into the little robot and obscuring its view.

Black saw the quick and efficient stabs of the knife into Pink’s back but no one else did. He had always been rather indifferent to this part of the job. It was weird to see a human flop down, suddenly lifeless but it was just another thing to do. It felt easier to cut them in half if he hadn’t looked at them directly during the murder. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

As luck would have it, or not depending on how you looked at it, the crew managed to get the lights on just a handful of seconds later.

Red and Blue cheered loudly, Black told everyone “good job” and then Brown started suddenly backing away in horror. He had been the closest to Pink on the other side and now he was stumbling back as the corpse had leaned slightly on him fell down.

Red started swearing, stepping back quickly. Blue started screaming loudly. Brown was freaking out and patting down his suit, some blood already having left stains on him. Green stayed frozen in her spot. White started swearing under his breath, stepping back slowly. It was a decent performance for being freaked out, like he hadn’t just gleefully sunk a knife into the human himself.

Black made himself fake react too, stumbling back much clumsier than he would ever be if he wasn’t faking it. He let out a sound of disbelief.

“Who the fuck was it?” Red said, whipping his head around to look at all of them. “I just dragged one body out of here. What the fuck?”

“This is a literal nightmare!” Blue screamed and looked ready to just bolt out of the room.

“Who did it? Brown, you were the closest!” White said accusingly and Black hid his cringe. It could be a good strategy to shift blame but it could also backfire. Maybe, it helped them that Brown wasn’t a big favourite around here to begin with.

“Yes, what do you have to say for yourself?” Blue shouted.

“You filthy murderer!” Red declared, just as loudly.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me! It’s not me! Do I look like I could do something like that? How would I even be able to do that?” Brown asked and pointed at the body that had flopped down face first.

The neat stab wounds were clustered together. An efficient kill. White would be feeling proud right now.

“That looks like our standard issued knife,” Black said, inspecting the wound. “This should be easily solved. Who has a bloody dagger?”

Everyone looked at each other, slightly freaked out. White was blending in well now, and he clearly wasn’t worried. He had no reason to be, when their suits had been modified to absorb and clean blood when weapons were slotted back in their holsters.

There were steps out in the hallway, running fast.

“What is going on, we heard…” Cyan started to say but came to a stop in the doorway.

Black wished for the first time ever that their visors were see-through because he would have killed to see the emotions that had to flicker across Cyan’s face right now. Just his body language gave so much away.

Cyan only spent about a second taking in the scene of Pink’s slumped body and six of their fellow crewmates clustered around it. Then without saying anything, he twisted around, catching Purple’s elbow and flinging them back into the hallway before they could see anything.

“What are you d-”

“Stay there,” Cyan said, voice both sounding horrified and dripping with authority.

“Out here alone?” Purple asked, sounding terrified.

“Trust me, you’re safer out there,” Cyan said, adamantly blocking Purple’s vision.

“You’re starting to scare me, Cyan,” Purple muttered and it sounded so worried and petrified.

Black would normally delight in that. It was something they had been trained to look for in the humans on their missions. When humans were scared, they would be making more mistakes and be easier to manipulate. It would count as a win in their boat.

However, for some reason, Cyan clearly masking his own fear for the benefit of others had Black frowning a little in his helmet. Why was he using so much energy for something so silly?

“There is another dead body,” Green said, voice also entirely too calm for this situation. Maybe it wasn’t as uncommon for them to act like this, trying to protect their young, despite what White and Black had been told during their training. They had always been told that humans were selfish and self-serving only.

“Oh,” Purple said, just one syllable and then they stopped trying to push into the room.

“That is all nice and dandy to shield the newbie’s eyes but what the fuck are we doing about the dead body?” Red shouted.

Cyan wasn’t sure what to make of this whole thing. He felt a little too scared to do anything. Even without any explanation, it was entirely too easy to fill in the gaps. The body would have been discovered if it had just been lying in the middle of the floor right in front of the panel that they would all have to move around to fix the emergency.

It likely hadn’t even been a legitimate and naturally occurring emergency. It was much more likely that it was sabotage from the imposter wanting to kill them all.

Cyan felt chilled down to his very bones as he watched the crewmates. Were they crewmates? It was becoming increasingly clear that there was at least one imposter among them. Cyan thought back to horrible stories of alien infiltrators that had circulated back at HQ. It was meant to be just speculation, a scare story maybe, to keep them in line.

Two dead bodies told Cyan that it was not story at all and someone was killing crewmates left and right. He wanted to throw up.

“We’ll all show our knives,” Blue suggested. “It will be clear who the is the murderer then and we’ll just get together and overpower them. It’s seven against one. We can do that.”

Cyan watched as everyone nodded in agreement. It would be too easy if this could reveal the imposter and Cyan had a feeling that this wouldn’t lead them anywhere. If the imposter was clever enough to get onto the ship as one of them without being found out, he probably had a way to handle a bloody knife.

His suspicions were confirmed when everyone pulled out their knives and they were all in good condition and void of blood. It took just a second of everyone inspecting the six knifes held out and finding nothing wrong with them before the discussion started back up again. Blue and Red were the loudest voices as always, but Brown and White got a few sharp words in too. Black seemed content to stay silent and Green tried and failed to make everyone calm down so they could have a proper discussion. Purple was silently shaking in the hallway and Cyan was just watching and trying to take it all in. 

She eventually succeeded in dragging them all out of electrical and back into the cafeteria for another emergency meeting. It felt wrong to leave Pink lying behind like that, even if she was too dead to care.

It was time for them to eat too, and then get in a maybe another short task before they would be bunkering down for the night. Not that Cyan knew if any of them would be capable of either eating or sleeping in this state of looming terror.

Purple had fallen entirely silent in their shock and hunched in their shoulders as the eight remaining crewmembers sat around one of the round tables. Their numbers were dwindling fast. Too fast.

“I don’t know why we’re having this meeting,” Red said. “It was clearly Brown. Did you see how he reacted when the lights came back on? He freaked out because he couldn’t move away from his kill fast enough!”

“What are you talking about!? And why is no one accusing White!? He was right next to Pink too!”

“Yes, but you are the one freaking out and being suspicious,” White said.

“Yes!” Blue agreed. “And you didn’t like Pink. You were annoyed at her for not listening to you!”

“I don’t like any of you!” Brown shouted back waving around the table.

“And that’s why you’re killing us all!” Red shouted.

All of this was giving Cyan a headache and it wasn’t like this meeting was any more productive the second time around. Cyan didn’t know who had been suspicious or not in the room, since he and Purple had arrived after the fact.

Brown started counter accusing Red and the shouting and arguing grew even louder.

It only stopped when a loud shrill permeated the air and everyone rushed to turn down their audio receptors. Green sat with her little robot in her lap, who had been the cause of the sudden noise.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Green cut through, now that everyone had fallen silent for a moment. “We need to eat dinner, and finish up any jobs we can before we need to call it a night and rest. We have no proof how to tell who is the imposter.”

“As if we could rest next to murderer Brown,” Red snapped.

“I’m not the goddamn murderer!” Brown protested.

“The only ones who are cleared are Cyan and Purple,” White noted calmly and his statement got every helmet turned towards Cyan and Purple.

Cyan did not like the feel of their gazes. It spelled trouble, even if what White pointed out would be a saving graze freeing them from suspicion. It didn’t feel very freeing. It felt like it was more likely to lead down a bad path.

After all, if the imposter knew they were definitely innocents that couldn’t be used to distract and cause confusion, they would likely be the next in line to be killed. Cyan shivered but tried not to let it show.

Black almost wanted to snap at White but he knew it would have looked weird and he didn’t have any right to do that. White was correct. It was another tactic that they had learned on their missions. Weed out the definitely innocents first and leave the ones that the crewmates might suspect to be the imposter.

It was the classic tactic.

It was not something that Black had considered when he had steered Cyan and Purple away from the murderer. He had been more focused on that weird tugging in his chest that told him that he didn’t want Cyan to be the one lying in a crumbled heap on the floor just because he had been the easy victim to White’s stack kill.

The feeling had distracted him from thinking rationally.

He should have considered that he was painting a target on Cyan’s back moving forward instead, but it had never been anything he had ever had to worry about. It was never like he had tried to actively prevent any of the crewmates getting killed. It was only a matter of killing them in the most effective way and whenever opportunity struck.

Black didn’t hesitate. He had taught himself not to hesitate.

But something about Cyan set him off and he didn’t like that White was looking at him like that. Black knew how White had been taught, because for most parts they were taught to think alike. Cyan would be a target over Purple because Cyan was the more experienced one and the one who seemed a little too smart for his own good.

Black wasn’t sure what would happen when White would eventually get to Cyan. It made him feel a little funny.

Brown started shouting again, this time arguing that those two were not excluded just because they hadn’t been in the room. It could still be some elaborate ploy and there could be more than one murderer. He started ranting that Cyan and Purple could just be the masterminds pulling the strings and making someone else do their dirty work. Not him of course. He was innocent, as he kept insisting.

It was the truth but he was not making a good case for himself.

Black would give Brown at least a little credit for figuring out that there wasn’t just one imposter among the crewmates but he quickly decided that it was just a lucky guess surrounded by too many ridiculous ones. He was just throwing accusations out there and trying to see what would stick.

To anyone but himself.

White was in his element here and Black let him participate in the arguing as well, a small smirk on his lips as he knew it was hidden behind the visor. The humans were running circles around themselves.

Blue and Red were adamant that Brown should be ejected from the ship. Green was more coolheaded and told them all that they needed to think this through, and Black jumped onto that defence as well. White seemed to side more with Blue and Red that they should kick out Brown. It could either be a clever or a reckless choice depending on how things moved forward, if Brown didn’t continue to be suspected then it was good to get him out immediately but it was a good cover if everyone was running around trying to catch Brown red-handed.

Purple didn’t say a single thing, almost like they had been frozen in terror and uncertainty. Cyan was quiet too but his quiet seemed different. Contemplative. Black was really curious to see what was going on inside of his head.

“We’ll have to put it to a vote then,” Green said, even if she didn’t sound like she liked it. “It’s the protocol for this kind of thing. Everyone’s vote matters equally here and we cannot reach out for help. If majority votes to eject Brown from the ship then we all have to carry it out.”

Oh, the humans and their democracy. It was always fun to see in action. It worked so poorly at times, but they still clung to it so sincerely.

“No way! You can’t make that kind of call!” Brown insisted, standing up and nearly stumbling over the bench.

He looked like he was fuming. It was very amusing. Humans were always the most interesting when they were falling apart. It brought out all their rough edges.

“It is protocol,” Green said sternly.

“Yes, sit down, clown!” Red hollered. “We’re going to eject your ass.”

“I will not stand for this!” Brown protested. “What gives you the right to take my life? You have no authority! Not you green cunt or anyone else!”

Human language was interesting. Words carried meaning, and they had different levels of appropriateness. One shouldn’t swear in professional situations and the most certainly shouldn’t use slurs.

Cyan flinched in his seat at the swear word thrown at Green.

“It’s in the manual,” Green said, seemingly unbothered. Perhaps she had heard similar things before. “A manual that you all have access to if you look for it. Everyone will vote and together we will decide what we’re going to do. It’s the only fair way.”

“This is bullshit!” Brown screamed.

Cyan spoke up all of a sudden and while he didn’t shout, his voice did cut through the air like he had shouted. People who could cut through a room with a steady voice were more dangerous than the ones creating a ruckus. 

“Two people are dead. Murdered. By someone who is among us,” Cyan said, in measured words. “We have to take this seriously. No one is going to vote without seriously considering the outcome, but we have to do something, or we will all be dead soon.”

Black wasn’t sure why Cyan’s words seemed to connect better than anyone’s else. Maybe because the tremble in his voice betrayed his own emotional state, and his own doubt.

He didn’t sound like someone willing to potentially send an innocent man off to his death but he had figured out the situation quickly enough. He was completely right.

In all likelihood, within 24 hours Black and White would have successfully terminated the whole crew. However, it was cute of them to think that this vote could do much. It could only delay or speed up the inevitable.

The whole crew were all doomed already.

Cyan didn’t like that they were all looking at him, even if he was thankful for the moment of quiet. He wasn’t sure why everyone was just ignoring Green who seemed to have taken it upon herself to help by giving them all structure and order.

Of course, she could be an imposter too. Everyone could be an imposter at this point. Cyan was mostly sure Purple wasn’t one, but that was a very small pool of cleared suspects and too large a pool of still viable suspects.

“Let’s vote then,” Blue said. “Protocol and all that. We’ll just all decide to vote Brown off.”

“You mother-” Brown said and he looked like he was about to launch across the table at Blue. Cyan froze reading himself for impact since he was essentially in the way for Brown to get to Blue.

It turned out that Cyan hadn’t needed to worry. Black moved out a hand to grab Brown by the back of his suit and stop him in his tracks. It was an impressive display of strength.

Brown almost snarled, more animal than human but Black just dumped him back down in his seat with a firm hand on his shoulder. Out of the corner of his vision, Cyan saw White tilted his helmet ever so slightly in Black’s direction. He wondered if they had the comms open in just an isolated conversation between them. It looked like they were communicating.

“Let’s put it to a vote,” Green said. “You have a voting system installed in your helmets. You can skip, or vote for one of your fellow crewmates. Does everyone understand?”

While Cyan agreed that they should do something, he wasn’t sure that he thought voting out a crewmember was the right option. He didn’t want innocent blood on his hands. He wasn’t sure if he could ever get that off. Just the idea made his stomach turn.

He had been declared unfit for exploratory missions for a reason. He didn’t have the stomach for it.

“What are you voting?” Purple asked him in a quiet voice.

“No conspiring!” Brown bellowed and Purple flinched and leaned back in their seat.

Brown was acting out of sorts. He seemed less than human right now, but unfortunately it made Cyan feel like he was most certainly not the murderer. He was drawing way too much attention to himself and now he was acting like a maniac.

It was really a rather human response to be accused of something you didn’t do. People panicked and would argue violently for their innocence while their frustration would grow and grow.

Still, the voting was necessary or Red and Blue would keep trying to push Brown out. Cyan also wanted to see how people would vote, and when they would vote. He had a feeling that might be more telling than anything else.

“You’re all idiots, I’m not the murderer,” Brown said, quickly pressing a button. “But I hope they gut you all.”

As expected, Red and Blue voted quickly too, followed shortly after by Green and White. Purple seemed to be very distraught and like the decision was tearing them apart.

And Black seemed to be waiting.

Cyan would have called that suspicious but then he was waiting as well, more concerned with observing others rather than voting himself.

He glanced around and wondered if they were about to kill an innocent man, as unpleasant as Brown was. 

Cyan couldn’t bear to do that, not when he was so unconvinced that Brown was the murderer. He pressed skip.

Black’s vote fell only a second or so later.

It left Purple as the last vote and they looked around, in growing distress before everyone heard the final beep that indicated that all had voted. Then the results were revealed.

Red, Blue, White and Purple had voted to vote out Brown.

Brown had voted for Red.

Green, Cyan and Black had decided to skip the vote.

“Wait, what happens now?” Brown asked, terror in his voice.

“According to protocol, we do nothing. Brown has to be expelled by a majority of the voters.”

“But that’s bullshit!” Red said. “He’s got the most votes!”

“Yes, but if it’s not a majority, five out of eight in this situation, then we cannot do it,” Green said.

Brown laughed loudly.

“Oh, he’s going,” Blue argued, standing up. “I don’t care.”

It looked like a fight was about to break out but then Green’s robot chirped up and started emitting a loud frequency noise that caused everyone to try to grab their ears, even though it wouldn’t help through the helmet. It was a handy little trick if you asked Cyan.

Cyan was distracted by the sudden noise but he could have sworn that Black reacted slower than everyone else to attempt to drown out the noise.

“We will eat dinner now and then you can finish up any tasks you can manage before we head off to sleep for the night,” Green said.

“How would any of us be able to sleep?” Purple asked, quietly.

“Yeah! We’re all going to get murdered in our sleep by Brown!” Red shouted.

“I don’t feel safe with that,” White said.

Green let out a sigh. “There is probably only one imposter among us, and at most maybe two. We are still in the majority and they cannot kill us if we all stick together. Everyone will sleep in the same room and our presence will keep each other safe. Now, let’s go get our dinner canisters from the shuttle.”

Cyan agreed with Purple. He wasn’t sure anyone would get any sleep at all. Still, they had to try.

Consuming human food was always one of the parts that Black hadn’t liked about these missions. The mush from the food canisters tasted bland and it had no consistency. Black would rather have eaten meat, but it wasn’t really viable when wearing the suits.

Of course, both he and White could breathe just fine without the spacesuits but going out of them would ruin the covert plan entirely. As would flashing their sharp teeth.

After dinner, they decided to switch up the working pairs a little. Purple went with Green. Cyan and Blue went together. Red insisted on pairing up with Brown to keep an eye on him and that left Black and White together.

Black didn’t much look forward to that. Both because it felt like a waste of time to go around and pretend to do tasks and because Black had a feeling that they were about to debrief a little.

He didn’t particularly feel like debriefing. In particular not because he knew what White would tell him.

“You messed up the vote,” White said, casually and in a tone that didn’t show any emotion but Black could still pick up that he was annoyed.

“Depends on how you look at it. Maybe you nearly messed up and I saved our asses,” Black said, knocking open a panel a little too violently.

The wires were a bit of a mess but it wouldn’t have taken long to fix. Black set about making them worse than when he found them.

“It would have been an easy elimination,” White said, turning on his light in the sleeve and pretending to light the panel for Black as he sabotaged the wires.

“Yes, but you know it’s a good thing when they suspect each other. It makes it easier to go undetected,” Black said, not knowing why he was standing on his point so adamantly.

In reality, he wasn’t sure if it had been the right call to skip the vote. He had just watched Cyan and tried to gauge what he would vote. It had been a silly thing to focus on a random crewmember and imitate him but Black had felt compelled to do it all the same.

He couldn’t even be sure that Cyan would skip but it had just seemed like the choice that he would make. Black was sure that humans would call it gut feeling but Black’s race didn’t have that concept.

He told himself that he was merely imitating to blend in. It was all this new behaviour meant. He was just evolving and getting better at understanding humans. It was purely to make him a more effective imposter.

“They are all turning against each other, another suspect would have popped up and it wouldn’t have been one of us. We do have a problem though, or rather a golden opportunity.”

Black knew what he was about to say before he said it. But he wasn’t sure why it would leave him with a feeling of unease to know what was coming.

“The two innocents,” Black said, knowing White would wonder if he didn’t follow the clear thought path.

“Exactly, those two who didn’t go to electrical have to be disposed of first. They are also too quiet and unlikely to cause a big commotion. Cyan in particular is too observant. We should kill him first.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Black said and he could almost feel the detachment he was having to pour into his voice. He didn’t want White to catch onto the fact that he was feeling just a tad too interested in that particular crewmate.

“It’s your turn, so you’ll do it tonight or early tomorrow?” White asked.

“Affirmative,” Black said and tried to pretend there wasn’t a bad taste on his tongue.

It was all Cyan’s fault. He was interesting, surprising with his spontaneous kindness and sharp mind. It made him a bigger threat than any of the others.

White was right.

Black had to kill him and do it soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think of this chapter? Now Black has to set his sights on Cyan but how do you think that'll go? Do you think Cyan is picking up something from Black? Ah, I'm really enjoying playing around in this universe. Also, what do you think of Purple? They're becoming a favourite of mine and I just want to wrap them up in a blanket and protect them, poor newbie.
> 
> Next update probably on Tuesday if I get it written in time.


	4. Navigator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cyan has never learned how to sleep when something is on his mind and it comes back to haunt him now. He knows that it's entirely too dangerous to leave the safety of the group in the middle of the night but he just has to do something. Two crewmates lost their lives and everyone have been too freaked out to properly grieve them. They deserve better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chapter yet! And finally more conversation between Black and Cyan but how will it go? 
> 
> TW: talk of religion (of sorts), grief, survivor's guilt, funeral rights, murder plans, fear of murder

Cyan couldn’t fall asleep.

He hadn’t expected to be able to fall asleep when they were likely sleeping with a murderer right next to them.

The eight remaining crewmembers had clustered together in the little shuttle. It was not usually where one might sleep during this repair missions. Most ships they would be sent to would have a sleeping quarter.

The Skeld had one too, even if it was located in a special room above the cockpit. None of them had made a move to relocated their packed sleeping gear to the usual room. In there the bunkbeds would be farther apart and leave you more vulnerable to attack.

The shuttle it had been then.

Some of the crew fell asleep rather quickly. Brown had been snoring loudly. Red and Blue had seemed to quiet down and fall asleep quite easily too despite their vows to stay awake and watch Brown. It was difficult to tell with Green, White and Black since they would lay very still but Cyan wasn’t sure if any of them fell asleep. Purple kept fidgeting, tossing and turning for a while.

The hours stretched on and Cyan gave up on trying to sleep and instead he tried to focus on resting. It wasn’t as good as sleep but it felt good to just lie still and pretend to sleep. He could feel that his body powered down a little, even if it was too big a task to get his mind to quiet up.

There was something nagging him, a little notion that he couldn’t quite grasp but he desperately wanted to lock down. He had a feeling he was seeing clues and missing them and it was infuriating.

As more hours passed, it seemed that more people fell asleep. Purple finally stopped fidgeting and they slept almost sprawled out now. Green had turned on their side, breathing steady, and even their little robot seemed to have powered down. White and Black were still the same almost unmoving in sleep so Cyan guessed they had been asleep this whole time.

Resting had felt good for the first few hours but now it was just boring and it was giving Cyan way too much time to think. It was too hard not to come up with scenarios where every single crewmate could be the imposter.

Green had said that there would probably only be one murderer or maybe two. It did seem logical that they wouldn’t be completely overrun, or the aliens would waste that many resources on a simple small repair mission.

It also begged the question if there was a larger purpose on all of this. Maybe the imposters were just coldblooded killers. It was how Cyan and any human raised had been taught to initially view a foreign species. They should be approached with caution because they could likely be someone who had no qualms about murder.

But it was a little naïve to think that it wasn’t some sort of organised operation if it was a reoccurring problem. It had to be, even if no one had openly talked about it. There were the whispers of murderous imposters both out on missions and back at HQ and there had been developed a protocol for dealing with this shit.

Cyan had checked their information and Green was right. They did surprisingly have a protocol for that. At first, Cyan wondered if it had just been someone sitting down and trying to think of any possible scenario they could come up with. Infiltration aliens could have come up.

However, he had gone back into the files and seen when they had been added to the database of emergency protocols.

A year. It had been a year ago. That notion had sent a shiver down his spine.

HQ was aware of something happening and they were not telling the crew. Cyan could understand their reasoning well enough – no one would be willing to go out on missions where they thought they might be murdered – but it still didn’t excuse it. It meant that MIRA was using them as pieces on a chessboard and they were willing to sacrifice a few low-level pieces.

It didn’t sit right with Cyan.

They were all people. People with unique lives and people who cared for them.

People who cared for them. Cyan hadn’t been able to get to know Pink or Yellow very well. They had maybe exchanged a few sentences in total, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t have people that cared about them.

Even if they didn’t have any loved ones who would cry for their death, which Cyan seemed unlikely, they still deserved respect.

Green and White had carried Pink’s body to MedBay and put it next to Yellow’s severed one. They had just moved the bodies out of the way for repairs. The atmosphere inside of the Skeld would mean that the bodies wouldn’t decompose at the same rate they would have done if they had been back at Earth but it still felt wrong to think about them just lying there.

There were still bloody stains in electrical. No one had made it a priority to clean it up. Cyan wasn’t sure if it was because it was deemed unnecessary, interfering with a crime scene or what but it made him feel restless.

Thinking about the two bodies of humans he had travelled with but never shared a meaningful conversation was making his heart feel heavy and sad. He couldn’t let himself sit with that feeling.

He was lucky that he had one of the spots closest to the door. He got up as quietly as possible.

It was a bad idea to leave the group. It could make him a target in two ways. The murderer could come after him or the other in the group could decide that he was the murderer and have him tossed out into space to suffer a cold and lonely death.

He shivered in his suit, and it wasn’t from the cold.

Cyan stood by his decision not to throw Brown out. Because what if they had been wrong? He couldn’t have made the choice that could potentially kill an innocent. He just hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be a mistake that got them all killed.

Cyan managed to sneak out of the shuttle without any of the rest of the crew stirring.

Black and White both heard Cyan leave. They hadn’t been sleeping. They didn’t need to rest as often as humans. It was difficult enough to pretend to be asleep for this long.

Black found it incredibly dull to just lie in silence.

As such he had occupied himself with evaluating the breathing and sleeping pattern of the crewmate around him. It was something to do. Almost everyone fell asleep eventually. Humans were always so vulnerable if they didn’t get rest. They would go insane bit by bit if you stripped away their ability to rest.

But it would take a very long time and despite being built to sleep away a third of their lives, humans could also surprise in how they would stubbornly refuse to sleep if the situation called for it.

Cyan seemed to be stubborn that night. His breathing did slow down over intervals but it always came back to being shallow soon enough.

Black had never quite had the time to contemplate human heartbeats before but now he found that they all sounded a little different. They followed the same general rhythm but everyone was unique in their own way. It was a way that humans were so different from their own race.

Black and White and so many others had been identical at birth. You wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. If they were to revert to their true form, then it would still look like they were completely identical, just bigger than when they had been born.

They were shapeshifters but they mostly shapeshifted to accomplish missions. It wasn’t because they wanted to express any type of individuality. It was something humans seemed to care about very much. It was one of their flaws, Black had been taught, as it made them rebel against order and their leaders.

Black felt a sense of trepidation when Cyan suddenly got up. He did it slowly, clearly trying not to disturb any of his fellow crewmates. Black almost wanted him to wake someone up, so that they would stop him from doing whatever he planned.

Cyan managed to get out without any of the crew waking.

White’s message came instantly. It was GO time and Black was the one who had to execute it.

Black responded back with a confirmation.

When you could bend and extend your limbs as necessary, even within the confines of the suit, it was easy to sneak out. No one stirred. Cyan had waited until all the other crewmates had fallen into a sound sleep, even Green who had been lying awake quietly for a while trying to keep watch.

The Skeld had been switched to low-powered lighting when they had all gone to sleep to spare the resources a little. It mattered not to Black who would have been able to see perfectly even if it had been pitch black.

But he knew that the dim lighting might make for a disadvantage for Cyan and that was a good thing. It made him that much easier to kill. He only had to find him and then he would be doomed.

He really did make it entirely too easy by walking off in the middle of the night like that. He was begging to be the next victim and Black wasn’t sure how to deal with the slight unease he felt in his stomach at that idea.

It didn’t matter. He pushed the discomfort away and started to search the ship meticulously. It did take longer than suspected to find Cyan but only because he turned up in the place that Black had least expected.

He had found traces of him both in MedBay and navigation briefly, but he had left nothing behind except a lingering scent. Without so many humans running around with their mixed emotional scents, it was much easier to track someone.

Cyan reeked of guilt more than fear. Black almost wanted to be a little offended that Cyan wasn’t creeping around the corner terrified that he might get murdered. He shouldn’t be so careless.

Even if he was assuming that the murderer might be asleep in the shuttle with everyone else. Black had thought him cleverer than that, but maybe he was just getting his hopes up.

For what, he wasn’t sure, but it felt like something.

Cyan was in electrical, door propped open with one of the boxes from the corner. It was almost too perfect.

Cyan had stopped by MedBay first just to look in on the bodies. He wasn’t sure it was going to do much more than make him wildly uncomfortable and ramp up his survivor’s guilt but he needed to see them. He had considered walking in and taking their ID cards for what he planned to do but it felt too invasive to strip them from their bodies, or what was left of it in Yellow’s case.

Instead, Cyan had headed to navigation where he found what he was looking for in some of the drawers. He was happy to have found a couple little strips of fabric, a time-honoured space explorer tradition. He also found an old magazine and upon a quick flick through, he determined that it could do nicely to make up for the lack of the ID tags.

Then came the hardest part which was making his way back to electrical. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to go into that room again without feeling the shiver of dread.

Two people had died in roughly the same spot, only hours apart. Cyan could almost swear that he could feel their ghosts lingering in the air.

He was a man of science but he didn’t outwardly reject the spiritual world. To him, it was possible that it was just something that science hadn’t managed to properly explain it. It would eventually, if given enough time and resources.

His old grandmother had been the one to teach him to always respects ghosts and haunted places. She told him that he should never worry about ghosts and spirits as long as he paid his respect and didn’t anger them. They only hurt people who deserved it.

He had been more inclined to believe as a boy, but he still knew that he had mostly promised to behave to appease his grandmother and get an extra piece of cake.

Still, she would have been proud of him now.

He put down the little strips of fabric that boasted of too many names to know them all. They were known as good luck charms to prevent accidents, or as objects used in prayer mostly. Every astronaut that Cyan had met had different names for them. They were just little pieces of cloth woven together with patterns. It was such a simple item but you wouldn’t find a ship without them. Some carried them at their person at all times, and there was almost always a couple in navigation to held light the way, metaphorically. 

Cyan flipped through the magazine, ripping out two pages. One with a woman frolicking in a field of yellow flowers, advertising some perfume, and another one of the newest types of communication device, this time with a cute rosy exterior. It wasn’t exactly a personal thing from the deceased but Cyan hoped that it would be the sentiment that counted.

He put the two pages down side by side and laid a prayer strip on top of each and took the third in between his fingers. He hadn’t gotten around to doing more than kneeling down when he suddenly felt like he was being watched.

It was an uncanny thing, something still buried so deep within his human instincts. It alerted him of danger nearby and he felt so foolish for risking all this to help ease some ghosts’ pain as well as his own conscious. Those thoughts only flashed by briefly before he steeled his resolve. No, this was important.

It probably wasn’t worth risking his life but it wasn’t pointless.

Cyan had the strangest urge to call out a weak “hello” but he wasn’t falling into that old horror film trope. He would be killed an instant later, surely. He had propped open the door to electrical, refusing to be closed in in this little space that was still full of bloodstains they hadn’t scrubbed out.

The night mode lights were making the hallway make look even darker and more ominous and Cyan braced himself for an attack. He wouldn’t be able to do much to stop it but he would still give it his best shot.

It would have been so easy. Cyan was making himself such an easy target once more. Black should strike instead of hesitating. It would be a clean kill and it would freak out the rest of the crew. Green, who had taken on leadership to deal with all of this, seemed to depend on Cyan in her corner already. Purple pretty much idolised the intelligent crewmate, and Cyan managed to make even bickering and high-energy Blue and Red focus.

Without him at the centre of the group, it would start to fall even more apart.

Without Cyan, Brown might get ejected on suspicion of being the murderer and then there would only be four crewmates left. Two double kills and they would have it in the bag.

Black wasn’t sure why he decided to step out quietly of the shadows instead of attacking. Maybe it was because Cyan’s fear was still mixed up with too many other emotions and he wanted to take a deeper breath and figure out this particular crewmate, or maybe it was because Cyan was oddly knelt on the ground near the bloodstains with very random objects.

Black had never seen anything like it and despite his training, he was so curious. If he killed Cyan, he would never get any answers. He told himself that it was the only reason that he moved forward to talk instead of kill.

He also pointedly ignored that White would reprimand him for this.

“Black,” Cyan said, voice hushed and tense as Black stepped forward from the shadows.

Cyan probably didn’t even realise that he was doing it but he was making himself smaller, like he could hide from Black. It was all instinctive reactions. If Black wanted to strike to kill, Cyan had no way of stopping him.

He should do that, and he would, but first he had to sate his curiosity. He could get on with the murder afterwards. It wasn’t like anyone was likely to happen upon them in the middle of the night.

“Cyan,” Black replied, purposely lingering by the door, even leaning against it.

Cyan looked ready to either fight or flight, even if he right now was locked in the third reaction that didn’t get talked about as much. He had frozen.

Once more, Black wondered what Cyan’s eyes looked like because he had the distinct feeling that they were boring into his own, as if trying to determine his sincerity. Black vaguely recalled something about the humans considering the eyes the windows to the soul.

Black had never heard anything more ridiculous but humans seemed to like eye contact and they sought it out even in their spacesuits when they couldn’t see each other’s eyes no matter how hard they tried.

It was oddly… endearing?

Black wasn’t sure what was happening to him.

“What are you doing here?” Cyan asked, still staying in his kneeled position, in front of his strange objects. Black couldn’t make sense of them. A few torn off magazine papers, and some pieces of cloth. It was a bizarre display and Black had never heard about anything like this in his training.

Even so, he wondered if every human was supposed to know what this meant and he didn’t want to expose his lack of knowledge. He couldn’t know it if was a specific or universal thing.

“I should ask you the same thing,” Black said. “It’s not safe to be up in the night all alone.”

Oh, the irony that being with Black was much more dangerous than Cyan walking these dark halls alone.

“I know,” Cyan said and there was a tinge of something in his voice and an emotional response too. Black couldn’t pinpoint it. “But I just couldn’t sleep knowing that we hadn’t given Yellow and Pink any rites.”

Black wasn’t sure what the hell Cyan was going on about.

“It’s why I got up,” Cyan continued, gesturing at his objects again. “Which brings me back to my question. Why are you up?”

Black was almost towering over Cyan like this, staring down at him. It should give him the upper hand in the interaction. Black’s race always depended much more on physical posturing than humans ever did. It was something he had learned to suppress but now it was flaring up at him, in confusion over Cyan looking so unafraid even if he was sitting below Black in a position that would render him slow to rise.

So easy to kill. Black wouldn’t even have to work for it.

Black wondered what he should reply to get Cyan to be the most open. He would have to lie, but the question was how much to lie. He decided on a mix of deceit and honesty.

“I got up to follow you,” Black said, “to watch your back.”

Technically, it wasn’t even a lie. Black was meant to watch Cyan’s back but only in the sense that he was meant to drive a knife through it.

“Oh,” Cyan said, and Black felt like there was so much packed into such a simple syllable, not even a word, more of an exhale. Black didn’t have time to analyse it properly before Cyan was speaking again. “Do you want to do this with me then?”

Black froze. He tried to scan the files hidden in his suit’s database but it couldn’t find anything that related to this. How was this possible? He was almost considering striking out to kill Cyan just to keep from exposing himself.

He had never ever been in a situation that he hadn’t known how to handle before. It was unnerving. It made him feel too much like them. The silly humans he was tasked to kill. They were already floundering around.

He was supposed to be superior to them. It was what he had always been told.

“Black?” Cyan asked.

It was a funny thing to see Black hesitate. Cyan had caught it multiple times by now and it was always this weird thing, like he went a little too still. He almost stood as if he stopped breathing.

It was probably just the bulky suit hiding his breath though. But something about the eerie stillness set off Cyan’s internal danger warnings.

There was at least one imposter among them and Black very well could be one. But then again, why hadn’t he just murdered Cyan upon finding him crouched on the floor, alone in the middle of the night? Cyan knew he would be an easy kill right now for any and all imposters.

It was why his brain was busy berating him for acting this impulsively. He was still half expecting Black to attack him any second and end his life. The hesitating could be a natural human thing but something in Cyan’s gut wondered why his brain registered it like unfamiliar, like alien, behaviour.

“What are you doing?” Black asked, stepping into the room a little more. It was like something clicked in him and he made a decision. Cyan wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

It was another odd thing. Most cadets knew about the prayer strips. Even if they might call them by different names, they always looked roughly like this. It was a common space thing but it wasn’t technically part of the curriculum when learning at the space academy. They usually wouldn’t pop up out on operations unless something had gone wrong.

Like the ship being about to fail or someone dying. Mostly, they were just there to bring comfort to the superstitious people. Many people tended to get superstitious or even spontaneously religious when they were faced with the vastness of death.

“It’s a prayer for deceased souls,” Cyan explained and tried not to tense when Black came nearer.

Cyan cursed the opaqueness of their visors once more because he wanted to desperately to know if he would be able to pick up something in Black’s expression. Even his body language was difficult to read most of the time, a little too stilted and mechanic at times. Some would just have called it formal and proper behaviour. The instructors at the space academy would surely have liked his straight posture, they had always been riding Cyan’s back when he would hunch over when working on his tasks.

Somehow, he had a feeling that getting back pain in his later years was the least of his trouble. A life in space always brought dangers.

“Why the magazines?” Black asked.

That was a fair question at least. Cyan was improvising, so he couldn’t be expecting Black to know why he chose this approach. Maybe he was really just overreacting and seeing enemies all over.

Cyan shuffled a little to the side, making room for Black next to him to kneel in front of the magazine pages and the prayer strips as well. Black was slow to comply but a moment later he was kneeling down. So very close.

Just having his presence near made Cyan feel on edge. It wasn’t the first time it had happened but it was the first time that he was so keenly aware of it. Some people had a naturally intimidating aura, it was a human thing Cyan reminded himself but he still couldn’t stop the wondering.

The waiting.

For a knife or a gun or whatever horrifyingly had torn Yellow to pieces.

He might just be overreacting but he was right to be valiant and on guard. Not that he was really sure that any of them could do much against what seemed to be such a ruthless and intelligent alien machine.

Black’s suspicious behaviour and aura aside, Cyan instead focused on the prayer.

“Normally, you’d get something personal from the deceased,” Cyan stared to explain. “Like a treasured item they always wore, or a thing they used every single day, or as usual here in space, their ID cards. It’s not like we’re allowed to bring anything with us. We don’t even bring our names on board. Too risky.”

“Why did you not take the ID cards?” Black asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“I…” Cyan hesitated, anxiously rubbing the prayer strip between his fingers. “I almost did but usually for prayers for the deceased, it’s a formalised thing. The whole crew getting together and doing their best to wish the lost souls’ easy passage on the other side. It should happen fairly quickly after death, but we won’t be able to do it now. Not with… everything.”

“But… you are aware that humans just cease to exist when they die, yes? You speak as if they might not,” Black said.

And there was something about the way he said _humans_ that made Cyan’s hackles metaphorically rise. He said it with curiosity but also with detachment. Like he wasn’t one. Cyan really detested his building paranoia and he was wondering if he was just suffering from confirmation bias or if he was really in mortal danger.

“Well, we don’t know. Scientifically. Some people believe that you go somewhere after death,” Cyan said.

“Do you?” Black asked.

Cyan turned his head just a little, looking at Black and once more he cursed the opaque visor. Even this close, closer than they had ever been before, Cyan could only make out a general outline of his face.

“I’m a scientist through and through, so I don’t,” Cyan said, wondering why he was letting himself talk about something like this. It wasn’t normal conversation and it was a topic he tended to stay away from. He never wanted to offend anyone by sharing that he didn’t really believe in pure faith. “But I find comfort in the rituals,” Cyan continued and that was true.

“Why?” Black asked.

Despite himself, Cyan could stop the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He had always liked curious people, because he was one himself. He had been a teacher’s pet since a young age, always trying to learn and learn, practically brimming with questions. He loved when people wanted to learn.

He just wasn’t sure why Black would need to learn this in his adult years.

“Because while I don’t believe it for sure, who am I to say, really? There could be some type of life after we leave our meatsuits. There could be some higher power that we don’t understand. And to be honest, faith has always been more about comfort for me. It’s nice, to have something to believe in. I understand why people want that. I’m never going to chastise someone for what they chose to believe in,” Cyan said and then recertified the sentence a little, “as long as it’s not hurting themselves or anyone else.”

Black didn’t answer, except for a thoughtful him. Several seconds passed in the mostly quiet ship. Only the low drum of the ship’s machines working could be heard.

“People hurt,” Black said eventually.

Cyan went quiet and unsure. It could be taken two ways and it was hard to read Black’s tone. It was hard to read Black’s everything really. He could mean that people caused hurt on others, or that they were the ones hurting. Maybe, it was the same thing either way. Cyan couldn’t argue with the statement.

Humanity has a brutal past and they had always been more of a threat to each other than any outside force.

“Sure,” Cyan said, with a shrug. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to strive to change that. You can start with yourself. Try your best not to hurt others. Try to bring forth kindness and compassion instead. One small action at a time.”

What a curious and fruitless endeavour. Changing the human world one kind action at a time. Maybe that was why Cyan was behaving so strangely. This weird philosophy.

Black had never encountered something like it before, but granted he never made much a habit of talking to the crew. It was usually just engaging in the minimal necessary small talk and usually on missions him and his partner imposter would be spread out anyway. Not much time for conversations. They got a kill off early and all of the humans just spiralled.

It was how it usually went. It was how it was going this time too.

Cyan was clearly in distress and weakly clinging onto some stupid prayer tradition that he didn’t even believe in. It should be pathetic by all accounts, seeking comfort in something so arbitrary.

So why did Black want to hear more? Why did he want to join in on this ridiculous prayer thingy?

Cyan was already suspicious of him, Black could tell based on his emotional scent. He wasn’t smelling terrified so he likely wasn’t sure but he was getting there, clocking in what must be unusual behaviour.

None of it mattered. Black would have to kill him before they left this room. What was one little gesture of comfort before he had to give up his life?

Black tried not to think of how it reminded him a little too much of mercy, a human concept they had heard about but rarely seen in action. Usually, human invaders just took and took without any guilt at all. Ruthlessly killing their faceless enemies.

Black’s race had started doing these missions to pay back the favour. It was as simple as that.

“What do you need for the prayer?” Black asked.

Cyan surprised him by extending the little strip of cloth that he had fidgeted with between his fingers ever since Black walked in. Black moved to grab it, expecting Cyan would hand it over but he kept a tight hold on the other side.

Black could rip it from him easily, without even exerting any real bit of his strength, but instead he just held onto his end.

“We can just sit here, eyes closed and wishing them well or we can say our thoughts out loud. Usually, you’d say something nice about the people and mourn that they were ripped away before their time.

“That’s it?” Black asked.

Human traditions were weird. What a curious thing.

“Everyone does it differently,” Cyan said.

“What does these do?” Black asked, wiggling the little piece of cloth that he was still holding onto. He was exposing too much by revealing that he didn’t know a thing about this.

But none of it mattered. Cyan wouldn’t be able to run away with this information.

He was drawing his last few breaths. Black could finally get some answers. It was recon he told himself. It would be good to know on the next mission if anyone started to whip out these silly little strips again.

Cyan let out a soft sound that didn’t quite sound like a laugh but something close. Black felt something jolt through him as he imagined what the human might sound like laughing. He had heard humans laugh before. It was a very curious thing.

“They don’t do anything, it’s just cloth. Woven cloth but still just cloth. It’s something a lot of people are taught how to do in like school and stuff or by their grandparents. Just weaving strings together until there’s a pattern. They don’t do anything.”

“Then why use them? For this?” Black asked.

This was all very confusing. Humans truly made no sense. An imaginary belief with worthless items.

Cyan shrugged again. “It’s just what we do. And… we should get on with it. We can’t have the crew waking up and finding us both gone from our beds. They will assume the worst.”

Something about Cyan’s tone made Black feel a little on edge already. It was ridiculous that it was Cyan rushing this thing along when Black was the one who was supposed to be worrying about that. He needed to kill Cyan and go back into the shuttle and settle into his sleeping spot before anyone noticed he was gone.

The longer he stayed away, the more he risked it being discovered and complicating things.

“Sure,” Black said, fake nonchalance.

He hated that he had a feeling that Cyan saw right through it.

“Okay,” Cyan said first shuffling a little to get more comfortably settled on his knees. “I’ll lead, yeah? Just keep your eyes closed and think of well-wishes for our lost crewmates.”

Black would do no such thing. There was no afterlife for dead humans. They were just decaying bodies. Well, part decaying bodies. Yellow’s upper half had been preserved and was resting in premium condition in the vents.

Black wondered what Cyan would think of that if he knew. Black hated that he had to push that thought away immediately before he started to feel almost unwell.

Cyan was trying to keep calm but it was hard. Black was acting entirely too strange. He wanted to know what the fuck was going on. If Black was an imposter, was he just playing with his kill? Or was he just a kid that had grown up uncivilised and Cyan was an asshole for judging him.

He wished that he knew but he wasn’t sure how to make up his mind one way or another. So far Black hadn’t done anything to indicate that he would hurt him but Cyan had heard the whispers about the murderous aliens and how cunning and smart they were. He had thought it was exaggerated stories but he wasn’t so quick to dismiss it after two bodies of fellow crewmen had been found on his ships.

Those murdered souls deserved this, even if they might not believe in the ritual. It was still a nice thing.

Against his better judgement, Cyan closed his eyes and tried to ignore Black who held onto the other side of the third prayer strip.

Cyan cleared his throat.

“I am so sorry that we cannot give you a proper goodbye. This is a poor excuse but it is the sentiment that counts, is it not? I should apologise for something else too, as I am mostly here to clear my own guilty conscience. I have read about survivor’s guilt but it is something entirely different to experience it personally. I am both relieved that I was not in your places and simultaneously feeling very guilty for that relief,” Cyan said, knowing his voice was barely over a mumble.

He kind of hoped that maybe Black couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.

“I did not know either of you well enough to do this nearly to the standard that you deserve but I hope if you are out there, souls trapped and roaming the ship awaiting justice like the space legends say, then this will bring you a moment of reprieve. An allowance to move on. You do not have to stick here. We will do our very best to uncover your murderer and bring them to justice. You deserved better than this,” Cyan said and braised himself to say the closing line for this type of prayer. “May your journey in the afterlife be painless unlike life.”

He kept his eyes closed. He waited. For Black to make a move, maybe, or just for something to snap. The air around them seemed tense and Cyan was seriously wondering why he was so calm in the face of what could be the very murderer of the lost souls that he was addressing.

Lost souls that wouldn’t be able to hear him in all likelihood. Cyan agreed with Black about the afterlife, but he still stood by his point. These kinds of rituals were more for the humans that he been left behind, the ones left to mourn and grieve. If some families and friends found comfort in wishing the deceased a safe journey onwards, then it was good.

Cyan didn’t feel better. If anything, he felt worse than before.

He felt trapped and he wanted to pull his helmed out and breathe properly. He was too damn trapped. They had managed to fix the O2 for most parts but the ship was still banged up from a meteor storm that had passed by either when it was manned by the old crew or while it had been floating in space. It was not safe to remove his helmet.

A full minute passed at least. Black didn’t say anything or move. Cyan didn’t either. He was also keeping his eyes shut.

But there was a storm in his heart, anxiety building, and he was stumbling to his feet before he was even sure why. He dropped his hold on the prayer strip stumbling out into the hallway, to lean against the wall and gasp a little for breath.

This was absolutely the worst time ever to get a panic attack, when a real potential danger could be lurking right behind him and in the meantime, his brain was deciding to freak out over spiralling thoughts about the validity of prayers and if he was just a shit human for trying to help someone else to help himself.

Black thought that Cyan had him figured out, at least when he was first springing up. Black would have struck immediately, a quick and effective kill before Cyan would even be able to properly get up, but he didn’t try to kill him.

He wanted to hear how Cyan had figure it out, all of a sudden and after the weird prayer thingy. It was an odd timing and despite himself, Black just couldn’t push down the curiosity like he was supposed to do.

It might have been hammered into his head to focus on the mission above all else, but Cyan was a walking distraction. Too intriguing for his own good.

Cyan had left Black holding onto the stupid thing. He should have just tossed it onto the magazine pages each of which had one similar lying on top of them. It was only now that Black noticed the matching colours to the deceased crew mates.

Cyan had sounded sad when he had said that he hadn’t even known their names, like it was so important. Names was another silly human thing. Black’s race didn’t use it. Why would you need to name yourself? You knew who you were and everyone knew who were who based on scent alone. If you needed to introduce yourself you would do so by stating your relations. Black was the child of a prominent leader in the Northmost sector of their territory. At training for these missions, he had just gotten a reference number. It was simple, neat.

Cyan hadn’t gone far, which was what led Black to wonder if he was trying to get away. He could hear Cyan’s frantic breathing, much too laboured. It was how humans breathed sometimes, if they managed to see that they were about to get murdered before it happened. Terror. Black had seen humans paralyzed by it. Perhaps that was what was happening.

Black walked out of electrical leisurely and he didn’t drop the strip onto the ground with the others. He put it into a side compartment in his suit. Purely for scientific reasons. It would be good to have an item to use to explain his newfound knowledge.

His superiors would praise him. New information was always appreciated. Black was surprised by how much the idea of turning over the little object made him feel on edge.

“Sorry,” Cyan breathed out, still seeming out of it when he spotted Black poking his head out from electrical.

If Cyan thought the hallway could save him from an attack, he picked the wrong hallway. There were no cameras here to capture the murder.

Despite Cyan’s odd behaviour, Black just stood and watched. Slowly but surely, Cyan managed to breathe and breathe deeply, like he was forcing his body to calm down. It was quite an interesting thing.

Black wanted to ask what was happening. He felt like he was being wrong footed again and he didn’t like it. Beings of any kind, humans least of all, should not surprise him as often as this one did.

As Cyan continued to breathe, slower and slower, Black evaluated the words from Cyan’s little speech. Survivor’s guilt. A concept he was unfamiliar with but Cyan had explained it well enough. It was a weak thing, really, to feel guilty for having survived just because someone else died.

Humans were so full of weakness.

But why did Black also see the beauty of it?

To care so much, even about someone you didn’t really know, that you’d mourn them like that, get so worked up over their lost lives. Black had always been taught to fight for himself, never depend on anyone. When someone had lost their lives at training because they simply weren’t up to scratch it hadn’t been mourned, it had been celebrated.

They had been told humans were the same. Relentless and unforgiving.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Cyan said, and Black realised that he was mostly breathing like normal again. Still had a hand pressed to his chest but he stood up a little straighter.

“You were being awfully loud, breathing like that,” Black shot back.

“Yeah,” Cyan said and there was too many emotions swirling in him, too many leaking out for Black to tear them apart and identify each one. “I… I get like that, when I get overwhelmed. I become irrationally scared and my body tells me I’m dying.”

Cyan should be scared, for real. He should be dying soon. Now, really, but Black still didn’t make the move.

But if that wasn’t why Cyan was freaking out then that was another stupid human thing. Fake fear? To the point that it incapacitated them like that? They were an enigma really. Weak and strong at the same time.

Strong in their weakness and weak in their strength. Maybe that was the reason that the rest of the galaxy truly feared them. Black had always been told it was because they were threatening to take over as the strongest species.

In space, the strong had always thrived and the weak had been pushed out. Black had never heard of any species that could be both. He wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Are you aware of how you look at me sometimes?” Cyan asked, hint of amusement in his voice. “You look like I’m a puzzle piece and you’re missing half the pieces.”

Black froze.

Black still hadn’t done anything. It should speak towards his innocence more than anything else, probably, but instead Cyan was starting to feel like it was the opposite. There were too many foreign and weird things aligning.

The thought should have made him terrified and maybe on some level it did, having thrown him into his first panic attack in a year. Maybe it hadn’t been such unfounded fear this time around.

But Cyan had always dealt better with a known problem, a known enemy. It made him feel stronger and more capable. It could be the reason that he wasn’t freaking out right now, or it could be because he was still aware that this was all speculation.

He could still have the wrong end of the stick. Fuck, he wanted to have the wrong end of the stick because he wasn’t sure what it meant if he continued to converse with a being that had killed humans in cold blood and was likely to turn around and kill him any second.

It was the reason he was poking and prodding, a little too curious for his own good. The puzzle piece comment had seemed to make Black clam up again but he hadn’t done anything.

No attack. No words. No movement at all, actually. Just… waiting.

“You look at me the same way, do you not?” came the reply eventually and now it was Cyan’s turn to feel caught out.

Black wasn’t wrong. He was spot on. Maybe they had been evaluating each other a little too closely. Cyan couldn’t figure out what all of this meant but it felt like it did mean something.

Perhaps he just wasn’t ready to face it.

“I look at everyone like that,” Cyan shot back easily. “I’m an engineer. I see something fascinating and I want to pull it apart and see how it works. I want to understand it, how it all fits together and creates something interesting. Machines mostly sure, but it extends to people too.” Cyan was speaking too much, entirely too loose lipped around Black but he couldn’t stop himself. “I don’t get to do it on these missions. We aren’t supposed to talk. To share. It’s not forbidden but it is discouraged. Keep your head down and finish your tasks. I never was very good at following directions.”

Black was watching him again, head tilted just a minuscule amount to the side. It could look like someone taking in his words, or a mimic of someone talking in his words.

Cyan needed to stop thinking about this. He needed to stop being alone with Black immediately and for the foreseeable future. Either to protect himself from getting killed or for wrongfully accusing a crewmate. 

Black should kill him. He should have killed him ten times over already. Opportunity after opportunity and he had just let them slip through his fingers one by one, never even trying to grasp them.

He felt like he almost liked the feeling of them just running through his fingers, slowly but surely escaping. When he thought about taking a bite out of Cyan, shooting or stabbing him, he just felt empty.

It would leave behind just a bunch of flesh. Everything that made Cyan fascinating would be gone. There was nothing that happened after you snuffed out the light in a human’s eyes. They simply ceased to exist.

Black could relate to the curiosity. Unlike Cyan, he had never ever been allowed to engage with it, instead having been told that thoughts like that were dangerous and he should just try to strive and follow orders. Don’t deviate. Just go. Cyan had those same rules here on the ship and yet he was deviating.

On this trip but also before. He clearly had some kind of comradery with Green and he had practically taken Purple under his wing already. He had spoken to Black, showed him kindness and tried to help when he could, just because.

“So, what about you?” Cyan asked, leaning back against the wall almost daringly. So vulnerable. So easy to kill.

“What do you mean?” Black asked.

Cyan tipped his head back just a little and Black could almost make out his eyes through the opaque visor in this bright light and thanks to his heightened senses. Cyan’s eyes looked sharp. Astute and dangerous.

It was getting dangerous to let Cyan live, not because he would stand much chance towards someone like either Black or White physically, but because Black was hesitating like never before.

It was a different type of danger. Black could begrudgingly admit that he was growing attached. He had been raised to immediately dismiss and destroy anything that could lead to attachment. His race didn’t do that.

If Black’s training had worked, then he would have struck Cyan at first chance. Unlike Cyan, Black had always been very good at following orders and it was what had gotten him this far. The only reasonable explanation for this new behaviour was that Cyan had rubbed off on him.

The likelihood of it happening more as time went on was high. He should stop it in its tracks.

“Black,” Cyan said, calling out his assigned colour like it was a proper name, like parts of his personality was captured within the assumed name. “We should go back and try to sleep for a couple hours.”

Logical. Clear. Only… there was something in Cyan’s tone again, like a message hidden between the words. An unvoiced question. Almost like Cyan was asking whether they could go back.

White had deemed Cyan too clever and Black agreed.

For the first time ever, Black disobeyed a direct kill order.

“Let’s go back,” he said with a nod.

Cyan looked surprised and he didn’t hide it well, almost stumbling over his feet even as he nodded in agreement. He knew something, or at least he had strong suspicions. Black could lie and say that this move was a trick to throw Cyan off his scent, but it was a weak lie. Anyone would say that it was better to just get rid of Cyan. White would say that. White would be absolutely pissed and demand an explanation from Black.

Black wouldn’t have one.

At least not an acceptable one.

He knew for a fact that White wouldn’t accept the explanation that Cyan was entirely too interesting, subverting what Black had thought he knew about humans and in procession of sharp eyes.

White would kill Cyan at first opportunity if he heard _any_ of that.

The craziest part was that Black was actually entertaining the idea of shielding Cyan over complying with White’s command. Black was already in too deep clearly.

He was surprised by how much he didn’t mind it. 


	5. Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was an imposter among them that much was obvious, and Cyan was even wondering if he had managed to figure out who it was. Still, his suspicions did not have any concrete evidence so for now he would keep it to himself. He had been so worried about an alien enemy that he had never considered to watch out for his fellow humans. Black knew he shouldn't interfere but something about letting this happen turned his stomach in the worst way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: fear of murder, attempted murder, murder

Cyan hadn’t been sure whether he would make it back to the shuttle safely with Black following close behind. He had watched his every step, felt like his whole body was rolled and tense and just waiting for something to happen.

Nothing ever did.

Black followed along, just behind him sure, but he didn’t make a single move. It should speak towards his innocence but there was still something nagging in the back of Cyan’s brain and he wasn’t sure how to make sense of it. Black had either not understood Cyan’s last closing question before he chickened out and just suggested that they should go back and sleep or he had just purposefully ignored it.

Cyan wasn’t sure what he had expected with that one. It wasn’t likely that Black was just going to come right out and confess to being a murderous alien imposter. And if he had done that, it would likely only be a second before Cyan found himself murdered.

It wasn’t like he could live if he was right and forced Black to reveal his true nature. He would be dead instantly. However, it made no sense for the murderer to toy with their victims and strike up conversation, did it?

Cyan certainly didn’t understand why that would be a good idea. Unless aliens might be trying to infiltrate and learn more about humanity. If that was the case, Cyan supposed that he had just offered up information without Black really trying very hard.

Though what he had spoken about had been bizarre information and nothing of real value. Cultural norms were harmless for most parts. He would think that any enemy would be more interested in learning about like power structures or biological weaknesses or some shit like that. Cyan couldn’t see why it would be beneficial to learn how someone grieved or gave funeral rites.

Cyan paused outside of the shuttle before climbing in and he wanted to ask. He was bursting with curiosity really but his self-preservation instinct prevailed just a little. Thankfully.

“You first,” Cyan offered, stepping back politely.

Black tilted his head to the side a little and gave Cyan an odd look.

Cyan hadn’t thought anything of it, always been raised to be polite, but he supposed that it could come off as suspicious behaviour, like he wanted to walk behind Black or he wanted to make sure Black wasn’t behind him.

He blinked too many times, breath caught in his throat but after just a moment too long of hesitation, Black moved without a word and climbed in first. He was already lying down on his sleeping spot when Cyan made it up. He was climbing slowly, trying to keep his movements for alerting any of the sleeping crew around them.

He did a quick headcount by instinct.

Green. White. Brown. Red. Blue. Purple.

And Black, of course.

Everyone accounted for. Everyone _alive_ accounted for, he rectified and thought of the magazine pages and the prayer strips that he had left behind on the floor in electrical. There would be questions in the morning, why someone would sneak out and do that.

Maybe it would even paint Cyan as someone who had a guilty conscience. It put him under suspicion as the murderer but he hadn’t even considered that until he was getting settled in under the blanket.

He didn’t care. It was the right thing to do. Someone should have done it. It was one of the troubles with constantly shifting crews like this. There was no captain and no proper hierarchy. It meant that when people got distracted with their own little tasks, nothing else got done. No one was around to call the shots.

 _Cyan_ didn’t want to call the shots. He just wanted someone to do it. Maybe Black could, if he was not the damn imposter. He was surely intimidating enough and Cyan hadn’t failed to notice how he seemed to commandeer a room, often without even speaking.

With thoughts of Black turning to more pleasant speculations, it was surprisingly easy to fall asleep. Or it could just be that the exhaustion finally got him.

He’d have to be up in another couple of hours but some sleep was better than none at all. 

Black could feel White staring at him. He could see the notification pop up, a private line to chat on, and he had ignored that as well. Without meeting White’s gaze, Black had just firmly shaken his head.

White clearly wasn’t satisfied with that reply but it wasn’t like he could cause a big scene in the middle of all of the crew. It was only a momentarily protection but Black was going to cling to it all the same.

It would give him time to figure out what had just occurred. This had never happened to him before. He had failed to comply with a direct order. While him and White were at the same level of training and no one had true authority over the other, it was understood that you worked together and never ignored your team mate’s suggestion when it was the natural and reasonable approach that you had both been taught.

Cyan’s murder had been just that.

Simple. Clean. Easy.

Even so, Black hadn’t been able to do it. Just the thought of it now, Cyan lying lifeless under Black, like Pink had done just hours ago, made something feel wrong. The thought of cutting up his body, a quick and clean mauver that they had practiced on human captives and cadavers until it was perfected, did the same funny thing to his stomach.

It was a new and terrifying feeling. First of all, it was a feeling. Not rationality. Black was losing sight of the goal of the mission and it all came down to a human who had been just a little too interesting and just a little too kind.

Black shouldn’t be able to be defeated by something so simple.

Over the next two hours, Black tried to make sense of the meeting with Cyan. He was no closer to an actual answer when the crew members around them started to wake up. It was interesting to watch how it happened almost simultaneously.

White had been awake the whole time too, but he feigned sleep as Green woke up first. As she stretched out, her little robot buddy woke up and its beeps were enough to arouse both Purple and Red. Red proceeded to dump his pillow on top of Blue’s head and calling him lazy for sleeping in despite having woken just a moment before. Purple tried to rub their eyes but were stopped by the visor and let out a little surprised and curious sound. That sound woke up Cyan who woke with a jolt, and managed to roll himself off his little foldout bed and land with a big clang on the floor. Brown woke up groaning and complaining loudly about the sound while White also pretended to wake up then.

Black hadn’t even pretended to be asleep.

“Oh, are you okay?” Purple asked, immediately getting untangled from their own blanket and going to help Cyan to his feet.

“I’m fine,” Cyan said but took Purple’s offered hand all the same. “Just tired.”

“We’re all fucking exhausted,” Brown growled angrily despite Black having witnessed him snoring away for most of the night, seemingly content to rest even during their current circumstances.

Still, it was an early hour and below the required amount of sleep that Black had been told that humans needed. 8 hours a day seemed a little excessive in his opinion. That was a third of their lives they spent suspended in a weird comatose state.

Black and White would need rest too but in much smaller amounts and at lesser frequencies. How humans had managed to conquer so much of the galaxy already with them being asleep for a third of their available time was a mystery.

And Black didn’t want to know what humans might have been capable of if they had a more optimised sleep schedule.

“We need to focus on our tasks today,” Green said. “We need to get the Skeld up and running as fast as possible and then get home to figure out what happened here. Everyone pairs up and sticks together.”

“What if you end up partnered with the killer then?” Blue asked, jutting out his jaw.

“Then you beat their ass obviously,” Red shot back. “Are you dumb or just weak?”

Blue gave Red a hard push.

“Can we kick them out just for being annoying?” Brown asked.

Black was inclined to agree but still the statement was rich coming from Brown who had done nothing but be an annoying ass this whole time.

Both Blue and Red snapped their heads in Brown’s direction with a sharp “hey!” that almost sounded like it was coordinated. As much as the two crew members didn’t seem to get on, they were oddly in sync.

Someone let out a heavy sigh and the shouting match seemed to dissolve before it could even start. All eyes turned to Cyan, who of course had to be the owner of the attention-pulling sigh. One human should not be able to demand attention this calmly and effectively while using so little to his disposal.

White was right to fear that Cyan’s presence would make their mission that much harder.

“Let’s try to stop the in-fighting, okay? We’re all scared-”

“Not scared,” Red mumbled.

“Yeah, right,” Blue grumbled.

“I _know_ we’re all scared,” Cyan repeated, seemingly ignoring the interruption, and emphasising his point, “but all we can do is try to get out of this in one piece. I don’t want any more of us to die. Let’s… let’s just try, okay?”

Maybe it was the genuine pleading in his voice but the crew seemed to agree and without more heated words exchanged, they started to shuffle out of the shuttle one by one. White was still glaring in Black’s direction when he was sure no one was watching.

It was a risky move when surrounded by so many eyes, almost as much as trying to strike up a conversation while they were lying among the crew they were assigned to assassinate.

Even so, none of that was as risky as putting the whole mission in jeopardy because of curiosity, like Black was currently doing.

“You would be a good leader, you know,” Green told Cyan on a private line that she had just opened up.

They were gathered around the table in the cafeteria, picking up their breakfast food cans. Cyan hadn’t expected the compliment. Frankly, he wasn’t sure if he would personally take it like a compliment.

He never felt in a fit state to lead anybody.

“Nah,” Cyan said, in a timid voice feeling like he had too many eyes on him as if the rest of the crew could tell that he was talking privately with Green. They wouldn’t be able to hear either way, the space suit’s programming kicking in and isolating noise from both of them. “I’ll leave you to the leadership. You’re doing a good job.”

“No, I’m not,” Green said almost a little sadly. Cyan was about to open his mouth and argue but Green continued before he had a chance to do so. “I am not. I am the most experienced so I feel it should be my responsibility to take charge but I do not enjoy it. Wangling people isn’t a strength of mine.”

“It it not one of mine either,” Cyan argued, very confused.

“I am not so sure about that,” Green said, conspiringly. “But you know yourself best. We should focus on the general conversation.”

With that final note, the private line clicked off and Cyan was once more able to pay proper attention to the crew around him. Not that there was much to pay attention to, as everyone was just inserting the cans into their food slot and slowly eating breakfast.

Space food was always a little too soft and a little too bland but it was packed with nutrients and it wasn’t like MIRA had ever taken any of the complaints proposed by astronauts to heart.

There was a dark cloud hanging over breakfast and Cyan felt it a little too keenly as well. He was mostly finished with his can of breakfast, or at least as much as he could stomach when feeling this anxious, when he spoke up and broke the sombre silence.

He cleared his throat rather loudly and seven helmets turned in his direction. He once more wished that he’d be able to pick out everyone’s eyes and expressions. He always missed it whenever he was out in space and they had to keep their protective gear on but right now the feeling was hitting him harder than usual.

“I just wanted to mention that I laid down a couple of prayer strips for Yellow and Pink in electrical near the… the blood stains. I’ve left them there, and I think we should just leave them until we can get home.”

If we can get home, Cyan thought sombrely.

“Hold up,” Red said, voice already gaining in volume. “When did you do that?”

“Why do you even care?” Brown grumbled. “They’re dead it’s not like they care.”

“That’s not nice,” Purple said, meekly but still loud enough that Brown seemed to hear it.

“You lil shit will have to grow up some time. Heaven isn’t real!” Brown said. “And anyone foolish enough to focus on making some little make-believe ceremony for a couple of corpses is suspicious.”

“Hey, keep your civil tone, please,” Cyan said, noticing how Purple was already folding in on themselves.

“You and your goddamn tone! None of it fucking matters! Why were you awake? When were you awake? Did none of you all fuckers notice? Cyan could have murdered us in our sleep! Why is no one saying anything?!” Brown asked, standing up and pounding his fist on the table.

The compact food cans, both the empty and full ones, wobbled on the table. Cyan could feel how this situation was spiralling and he had hoped it wouldn’t come to this but he knew he would have to come clean either way. It would be worse if they had noticed the new display in electrical and no one knew how it had gotten there.

“Funeral rites aren’t silly,” Green argued with a calm voice, “they are a-”

“Shut up! Like who cares? It’s all pretend! Why are you all blind? You were so ready to shoot me out of here just for being near the damn bodies and now Cyan is sneaking around in the middle of the goddamn night. Did anyone check on the bodies? Did he go devour them? Is he about to do the same to us? You are all id-”

“I was with him last night,” Black spoke up and no one seemed to have expected the usually quiet crewmate to speak, let alone speak with such a distinct and no nonsense voice.

Cyan frowned a little. He wasn’t even sure why. It was true. Black had been with him almost the whole time and he could vouch that nothing out of the ordinary had gone down but for some reason, Cyan hadn’t thought that he would do so.

At least not until prompted. Cyan wasn’t sure he would have been able to prompt him, still a little too scared that he was messing with something he didn’t understand.

“You were with him? The whole time?” Red asked.

“Yes,” Black said. “I heard him leave and followed.”

“That was dangerous behaviour,” Green commentated.

“More like badass,” Blue said and he sounded almost impressed. “Were you going to kick his ass if he was going around messing with the ship?”

Cyan turned to Black, also very interested in hearing the explanation once more, this time in front of an audience.

White was going to be so mad at him. First, he didn’t kill Cyan when he was supposed to and now, he was actively removing suspicion from him. It was the opposite of the mission goal.

There was a possibility that they would have to call a meeting and Cyan could have been voted off.

Blue and Red were trigger happy. Brown was the instigator. White would support it too, wanting to further their mission.

But it would still not have been enough. Green and Purple had a soft spot for their cyan-coloured crewmate, and it wasn’t like Cyan would vote for himself either.

It would have to be Black’s vote triggering the decision. Black wouldn’t be able to make that call right now.

It was pointless to go down that path. White wouldn’t accept any of this excuse, least of all Black’s hesitance to get involved, but there wasn’t much Black could do about this in the moment.

“I was going to keep an eye on Cyan,” Black said, coping language that both Red and Blue had used when they had been accusing each other. “He was acting suspicious and I didn’t want all of us to wake to find the ship failing. I followed him almost immediately. He just went to get some things, an item to represent the lost crewmembers and the prayer strips, to do the little ritual. Just a few words of comfort for Yellow and Pink’s soul. Standard stuff.”

Black was talking out of his ass. He wondered if Cyan would call him out on it. While it was all true, Black knew that his tone painted it like he had known exactly what he been going in last night.

Cyan was surely watching him very closely but he didn’t say a thing.

“Who’s to say that it’s not the two of you then?” Brown argued, seemingly so ready to attack anyone now, as long as it wasn’t his butt in the hot seat.

“Then we’d probably have sabotaged the ship together or gone to kill you all in your sleep, don’t you think?” Black bit back, a little bit more aggressively than was potentially warranted or wise.

It was mostly on purpose. If Brown wanted a damn target, he could point his aim at Black and Black would rip his damn face off. That would show him not to go around throwing accusations on actual innocent humans.

Black had never cared about that before. In fact, he was supposed to encourage that kind of behaviour. White was tense next to him, undoubtedly just waiting for the moment he could get them alone together and question Black on what had gotten into him.

“Okay, we cannot waste more time arguing here. Do we want to call a vote?” Green asked.

“Yes,” Brown said adamantly.

“No,” Red answered. “You don’t have enough evidence. Let’s go check out electrical, all of us together and if Cyan and Black are telling the truth about that, then we have no reason to doubt them about anything else.”

“Sounds like a reasonable idea,” Blue said, “even if it came from a moron.”

“Shut up, or I will gut you in your sleep,” Red threatened.

“I agree. Let’s head for electrical,” Green said and resolutely stood up and walked out with her little robot in tow.

The rest of the crew followed, but everyone seemed vary of each other, keeping more distance than when everyone had first boarded the ship.

Black knew what to expect when they walked into electrical. It was just like him and Cyan had left it. Mostly, everyone seemed appeased at that. Purple sounded downright relieved while Brown continued to complain.

Despite the high tensions, they all agreed they should split into teams of two and go around and get work done. Black wanted to reach out and grab Cyan as a partner, both to avoid an interrogation from White and to ensure he didn’t get paired with someone who would get him in trouble.

He wasn’t fast enough. Brown had already thrown an arm around Cyan, a touch that Cyan didn’t look very comfortable with at all.

“I claim our little religious bean, if you’re cleared from suspicion then that’s as safe as I can be,” Brown said, and there was something off about the tone.

It sounded like he was saying words he didn’t mean. Cyan undoubtedly picked up on it too, it was written all over his body language but he still agreed. Black wanted to tell him off for being stupid, but he couldn’t not with so many people watching.

“I’ll got with Black then,” White said, just like Black had feared. “We’ve got a lot of the same tasks, so it will be faster for our team up.”

In a sense, White was right. They had no real tasks to maintain or repair the ship, but they did have the same mission from their home planet. Black didn’t put up a fight, he knew this conversation was coming sooner rather than later.

Blue and Red teamed up once more and so did Green and Purple. Everyone scattered pretty quickly while White and Black remained in electrical to get started on their fake tasks.

White didn’t waste any time. As soon as the real crew had left, he pounced. Literally.

He shoved Black against the wall, with enough force for it to hurt even someone as durable as Black.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Why is Cyan still alive? Why are you vouching for him in the meetings? Have you lost your sanity?”

“No,” Black said and shoved White off with enough force for him to stumble. They were roughly equally matched in pure physical strength but Black had always been studying those around him, looking for weaknesses and he had already figured out that White was bad about favouring his right side over his left.

“Explain yourself, solider.”

Black let out an inhumane growl.

“I am collecting information. Last night I obtained valuable information from Cyan. He is a foolish human, speaking of secrets that he does not even know. It is the only reason he is still breathing. I thought it could be useful for future missions and I want to squeeze as much as I can out of him before I take his life.”

It was a lie but Black made sure that it didn’t sound like a lie. He kept his words steady, a little annoyed even so that it would come off as if White was silly for not considering the potential of such an interaction.

Black was pulling it out of his ass but it was the best excuse so far. Except for one thing.

“We are not meant to engage with the humans. Not beyond assimilating and keeping a low profile,” White said, sounding like he was citing their damn rulebook.

Black knew he should thread carefully here. They were meant to follow the orders no matter what. No new approaches, no new ideas even if they had been leading to the same end goal. They had been taught to stick to protocol. Outside of the box thinking was a human custom that they feared and didn’t understand.

“I am assimilating,” Black argued. “What I learned about the crew’s funeral rites is valuable for the future. It is a common custom. A superstition that is not taught formally but still something all their astronauts know of. With this information, we will be more effective imposters next time.”

White was standing stock still, clearly taking in Black’s defence and evaluating it. Analysing it. Critically and without bias, just like Black was supposed to do with everything.

Just what Black felt like he had been unable to do after he had started to talk to Cyan.

“Your actions were not approved, which is an issue we will report to our superiors, but they will likely approve of your reasoning. You must share your newfound knowledge with the whole squadron upon return.”

“Yes,” Black agreed quickly.

“However, I have just one question.”

Black thought he had gotten away with it but now he tensed again. It had gone a little too easily.

“Why didn’t you kill him afterwards on the way back?”

Black couldn’t even answer that to himself.

Cyan did not want to be partnered up with Brown but he hadn’t wanted to kick up a fuss. He didn’t believe for one second that Brown had a sudden change of heart and dropped his suspicion. It had all been fake mellow words.

On top of all of that, Brown was also doing a lazy job. They had decided to go around and fix the wiring that was shot to shit all over the Skeld and Brown was not pulling his weight at all. They were supposed to switch back and forth, the delicate act of transferring and connecting wires something that left your hands a little strained, but Cyan ended up doing them all each time. Brown was supposed to hold the flashlight but even that seemed like too much a drop, the beam of light constantly dropping when Cyan was trying to work.

He told himself that it was of no matter. He had worked with difficult people before. He could handle this too.

Maybe, he would have been able to do so if it wasn’t for the fact that he got a distinct angry and predatory vibe from Brown. Cyan still wasn’t sure whether or not Black was actually an imposter but even if he was right about Black, it did not mean that he was the only one. There could be more than one. In the horror stories being told around the MIRA base, there were always multiple. Two. Three. Maybe even four.

Just having one seemed almost unlikely and seeing as they hadn’t managed to expel any crew yet, it was sure that any imposters that had boarded with them would still be among them.

It was the reason that Cyan was rather happy with the job of wires, even if he had to do more of the work. The wiring they needed to do in storage and in admin was in a rather open area and not a place that could suddenly get closed in, or left alone.

The ship did feel more quiet with the crew reduced to 4/5 of its original size but there were still crew around them, moving around from task to task. Red and Blue were having a race about who could fill up the engines the fastest, probably spilling valuable fuel on the floor in their hurry, but it was people. It meant safety, even if Cyan’s fingers ached.

He had been expecting Brown to hound him but he was quiet, which was almost more unnerving. Cyan would have attempted small talk but he really wasn’t feeling up for it.

Two deaths. The guilt. The fear and worry. Black and Brown both being suspicious and Cyan having been alone with both of them within the last six hours. It was entirely too much to take in.

Maybe some mindless chatter would be a good distraction. Cyan found himself missing Purple and their constant stream of questions when they had all first boarded and the two of them had been paired up.

“Okay, let’s head for security next,” Cyan said after they’d finished up with the panel in storage.

“Sure,” Brown said, perking up only when they were moving from one spot to another. He would glance around frantically almost like he was worried something would jump out at them from the wall.

Blue and Red had spilled fuel in the hallway leading out of storage and towards the engines. Brown nearly slipped in it but Cyan reacted fast and managed to stabilise him.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Brown almost shrieked, batting Cyan’s helping hand away.

“I was just-”

“I’m onto your game,” Brown declared and took a couple more unstable steps. “You won’t get me.”

Cyan was too tired to explain that he wasn’t out to get anyone. However, Brown’s behaviour did make Cyan feel a little better about the risks of him being the imposter. He could just be lulling Cyan into a false sense of security but he was starting to doubt it.

Brown was too loud, too obnoxious and frankly he didn’t seem smooth enough to pull off the subtle kills that had happened on the ship.

Someone else did. Like Black with his quiet demeanour and easy command of a room.

The wires outside of security proved to be the most stubborn yet, and it was only made more difficult when Brown abandoned Cyan to the task alone, just so he could stare at cams.

He was insisting that he was protecting them both but Cyan wasn’t so sure about that. It was more difficult and fickler to do without the help of proper lighting but Cyan had never been a quitter. He worked quietly and diligently. He felt like he was more exposed without his partner nearby, even if said partner was exhibiting annoying behaviour.

It felt like someone could just glide down the hallway and stab him, quick and effective, just like Pink had been murdered. He would almost prefer that to being mutilated like Yellow.

Cyan did let out a little jubilant cheer when he finally got the last wires connected. He checked the status of the Skeld and it was fully operational now with all the fixes. It was work that had taken just a couple of hours, and frankly it could have been done better if Brown had pulled his weight.

“Where to next?” Cyan asked. “Now that we’ve got our shared task done, do you want to do one of yours or one of mine?”

Cyan walked up to behind Brown, who instantly flicked away and glared at him. Well, Cyan was presuming that he was glaring. He couldn’t see but he felt the heat of the gaze all the same.

“Where is yours?”

“Either analysing samples in MedBay or heading to navigation to stabilise the steering,” Cyan said.

He was happy that he was down to two tasks already but he had a feeling that more might be piled on afterward. It would be fine. He could handle helping out a little more. They were two crewmembers short after all.

The thought alone made something in his stomach curl, just like always.

“Samples take time, right?” Brown asked. “Let’s get those primed for analysis first and then head for one of mine.”

It was one of the first sensible things that Cyan had heard come out of Brown’s mouth and that should probably have been a clue.

Cyan was too busy being happy that Brown finally seemed to cooperate to take notice.

Black had given White some half-ass excuse about wanting to get more information out of Cyan and planning to partner with him this morning if it hadn’t been for Brown swooping in fast. That part was at least true.

The last couple of hours had been a lot of waiting and looking for a good opportunity but it was hard when the crew were paired up like this. They could move in for a double kill but that was also risky because it would expose which of the three remaining pairs contained the imposters as well as confirm that there was more than one.

“It’s all going to slow,” White complained, a private line open between them as they strolled through the ship pretending to head to their next task. “We have to speed it along.”

Black knew where this was heading.

“Sabotage,” he agreed, even if he wasn’t too keen on the idea. “What do you want to do this time? Cut the lights again?”

“No, let’s go for their O2 this time around,” White said.

Black wasn’t sure if that was the best option.

“But they all have their tanks and their suits on as a precaution. Even if the O2 goes, then it’s not an immediate disaster for them.”

“Of course not, which is exactly the point. They will have to fix it, because they will need to refill their tanks before the journey home or even before to survive but it’s not an immediate emergency.”

“Meaning that likely only one couple will volunteer to go fix it so the others can stay on task,” Black said, finally catching on. It was rather smart.

“Exactly, and let’s aim for it to be Red and Blue,” White added.

Black was a little thrown by that. He had expected that White would insist that Cyan would be next, or maybe Purple and Green. Anyone but the loud trouble makers.

“Why them?”

“Oh, I’m bored and I want to have fun,” White said and if he had not been in his disguised form, he would likely have exposed his wide marrow with sharp teeth and grinned wickedly.

Black had a vague idea where that was leading. Mind games and pitting the humans against each other. It was what White did when he was bored.

“You want to do that alone?” Black asked, not particularly wanting to get involved. “They might be more suspicious if two of us come up to them.”

“Yeah,” White agreed easily. “I’ll do better without you getting in the way and don’t you have unfinished business?”

Black did not like where this was headed.

“What do you say?” White asked. “Cyan might not kill but Brown will and then you can just off Brown afterwards. Two double kills at the same time. It will be a legendary record. Something to be proud of and even something that could lead to a promotion.”

Black was surprised by how little he cared for the status and praise that had first driven him into this programme, along with a sense of duty. The acknowledgement and the pride had always been a big part of it as well.

He didn’t feel very prideful right now.

Even so, he agreed easily to White’s plan. After all, he could always make something up about Brown not being easily pushed and the double murder failing. He would manage to wiggle his way out of that somehow.

“Let’s make sure Red and Blue are close and then cut the O2 supply then,” Black said and mimicked, almost perfectly the predatory purr that White had let out before.

It wasn’t genuine. Everything about this felt wrong.

Cyan didn’t want to be in MedBay with the bodies but it wasn’t like he had much choice. The sample was one that one of the other crew members had gathered when they had arrived and it needed to be tested and confirmed to be a non-hazard before the Skeld would be accepted into port back at MIRA HQ.

It was not Cyan’s area of expertise and as such, he felt a little hesitant about slotting the sample into the machine and put it to the right settings. He was thumbing through the manual and looking for the answer.

Brown wasn’t a help here either, just lingering by the door and looking down the hallway. Standing guard probably but it didn’t make Cyan feel any safer.

He finally found the right section in the manual and diligently pressed the buttons shown. He broke out into a smile when the machine beeped friendly and turned green. It told him that it would take an hour to analyse the samples but that was fine.

A second later, an alarm blared and for a second, Cyan was worried that he had pressed something very wrong on the machine.

Checking his suit, he quickly realised that it was another emergency fail of some of their equipment. The fear was instant. This was a shitty ship that was slightly falling apart but they had spent a whole day putting it back together. It shouldn’t be still encountering emergency situations, unless someone was messing with it.

Sabotage.

Last time something like this had happened, Pink had collapsed and died.

Cyan didn’t move for the first few seconds. It was the O2. It was critical for their return home but everyone had filled their space tanks this morning upon first waking up, so it wasn’t like it would be an immediate problem.

It still needed to be fixed. Cyan didn’t want to go anywhere near it.

“The O2 is malfunctioning,” Green said.

“Red and I were at weapons, shooting away asteroids like professional marksmen,” Blue said. “We’ll take it. The rest of you all stay put.”

“Yes,” Red agreed. “And if anyone tries anything, we’ll show them the wrath.”

Cyan didn’t like their cockiness. It would get them killed.

“Okay. Be careful,” Green said, and there was the click that the communal comms went offline again.

It was just a click away. Cyan could open it and tell them not to go in there alone. The blaring alarm was making it hard to be able to think. The fear of death was doing the same.

Cyan backed away from the scanner.

“We should go with them,” he told Brown.

“Why?” Brown asked. Angrily. Defiant.

“They shouldn’t be on their own. There is very possible two imposters and they would have heard that transmission too. If they have ended up together, then they can just go kill Red and Blue.”

“Or it could be Red and Blue who are just waiting for a dumbass like you to come running when it takes too long,” Brown said.

“We should still go,” Cyan said resolutely.

He was scared. So very scared but he didn’t like the idea of leaving some of his crewmates in such a vulnerable position. There was strength in numbers. Ideally, they should just all have been together but that wasn’t feasible when they needed the tasks done swiftly.

Pairing up had been the only choice but that didn’t mean for emergencies.

Brown surprised Cyan when he stepped away from the door he had been guarding and slammed it shut forcefully. Cyan heard it shut closed properly. It locked.

It was a lock that could be opened by any crew member with their unique codes but that still didn’t stop the fear surging through Cyan.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Brown said, suddenly looking more imposing.

Maybe Cyan had gotten Black wrong. Brown was definitely about to do something terrible.

It was instinctive to back away.

“What are you doing? Brown,” Cyan said sternly, panicking and wondering how someone argued for their life when they were either standing opposite a clever murdering alien or a human who had clearly lost his mind.

None of these were good options.

“You are messing everything up,” Brown said. “You’re the secret imposter always planting seeds in everyone’s mind. Buddying up to that fake-leader Green. Making the baby idolise you. Even getting stoic Black to back you and being able to calm down Red and Blue. You’ve got everyone wrapped around your finger but not me. I will not fall for your tricks, demon!”

Brown took a couple of hasty steps forward and Cyan had to stand his ground, not backing up further as that would put him against the wall. He would need the room to dodge, even if he really didn’t want to get into an altercation at all.

The knife popped out of Brown’s suit’s sheath and he held it up.

“You can’t use your alien powers on me. My mind isn’t weak like the others. I will plunge this through your heart and safe us all,” Brown said and launched.

He was fast but Cyan was faster and managed to duck out of the way. The knife nicked his arm but not enough to actually cut through the thick suit.

In the jump, Cyan had managed to come nearer the door but it mattered little when it was locked. It would take too long to unlock, and give Brown ample time to put the knife into his back.

It could cut through suit matter if aimed correctly. They had been told this when they had been issued the weapon, so that they would treat it with respect and not hurt themselves on the advanced knife.

If Cyan couldn’t get out, he only had the hope that he could convince Brown that he was mistaken in his suspicions. The only other alternative was one that Cyan didn’t even want to consider, which was pulling out his own knife and start swiping.

If he did that, then he would be no better.

“Brown, I know you must think that you’re doing the right thing but you have it all wrong,” Cyan said, trying to plead even if Brown seemed determined beyond reason.

“I will not listen to your lies! Die!” Brown said and came running towards him again.

It had gone just like White had planned. Red and Blue had practically jumped at the chance to go fix the emergency. They had been so arrogant about it as well, so sure of themselves. White would be able to tear into that certainty and flip it on its head.

Black had seen him do it before. It was fascinating to watch how you could turn humans against each other. As far as Black knew, White hadn’t managed to get two crewmembers to actually kill each other but there was probably a first time for everything. Black didn’t doubt that White would succeed in his mission.

He never failed.

Just like Black.

Before at least.

The blaring of the alarm was tough on Black’s sensitive audio receptors but he could ignore it well enough. Part of him was relieved that this was coming to an end sooner rather than later. If Black failed in getting Brown and Cyan killed right now, then surely White would take out Cyan soon enough.

It would be for the best.

Black was slowly coming to the realisation that he wouldn’t be able to do it, and while the thought of Cyan dead made him feel on edge and irritated, he knew it would be easier that way in the grand scheme of things.

That was always how he had been taught to look at things. The grand scheme. Nothing mattered on a smaller individual plan. Always the great master plan above all else. Feelings were certainly not tolerated. Attachment was seen as poison. And hesitation got you killed.

Purple and Green were in the reactor, Black noticed as he snuck through the halls without being detected. Alarms were still blaring. Black walked up and up, turning right at the end at the upper engine, before heading down the hall.

The door to MedBay was shut. It shouldn’t be shut.

It was another way that him and White could sabotage but the system tended to get overloaded if you tried to close doors and break down equipment at the same time, which mean that someone had closed this door manually.

Black stepped a little closer and he didn’t want to listen in at all but he knew that he had to do it.

Cyan had managed to evade the second attack as well, and without the knife making contact this time but it had forced him up into a corner and now Brown made his move, frantically like a wild animal caged in even if Cyan was the one against the wall.

“You’re going to die and stop causing trouble for us all,” Brown shouted, knife against the throat of Cyan’s suit. It was probably already cutting a slice in the fabric, Cyan realised feeling more lightheaded as his oxygen might be depleting quicker than expected.

What a shitty time for the internal O2 to have been sabotaged. The alarms blaring overhead made all of this feel too surreal and like it was moving too fast.

Cyan knew he was going to die here.

It seemed almost ridiculous that he would lose his life to a crewmate considering the current circumstances. His parents had always said that he was a special one who liked to make things more complicated than they need be.

He hadn’t quite thought it would end up like this.

Cyan was scared of dying but he felt the fight bleed out of him just a little. Brown was bigger and physically stronger and more than anything he was fuelled by rage and fear. Cyan never stood a chance against that.

With the blaring alarm, Brown pressed up against him and the knife making its way slowly through layers and layers of his suit, Cyan hadn’t been able to focus on anything else happening in the room.

It was why it came as a horrifying surprised that Black suddenly popped up somewhere behind them, which didn’t make sense because there was no door there. What made even less sense was how Black ripped Brown off Cyan with inhumane strength and twisted his whole body. The alarm chose that horrible moment to finally cut off with its glaring, signified that Red and Blue had fixed the emergency issue. In the new quiet, Cyan could hear entirely too clearly how multiple bones broke in Brown’s body as Black twisted him like an old wash cloth.

The knife clattered against the floor first. Loud in the small room. A moment later, Brown fell from Black’s grasp, a crumbled mess that looked like he’d been twisted beyond recognition.

Cyan had fallen back when Brown had been ripped off him, and he was leaning on the wall just watching Brown’s body in horror. His heart was thundering in his chest, almost feeling like it might give out any moment.

He lifted his eyes off the crumbled corpse and met the gaze of the imposter head on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a couple of days late, I genuinely forgot to put it up on Tuesday because of 1st of December stuff happening and then yesterday I had a very busy day. I hope you enjoyed this chapter though! It is finally revealed who is one of the imposters and now Cyan and Black are trapped together. What do you think will happen next? How is Cyan going to react? How is Black going to react? I've already written a sizable chunk of the next chapter so that one should be ready on Tuesday next week!


	6. Underdog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cyan was facing off against an imposter. An imposter who just had killed in front of him, but not for the reason one might suspect. Even so, Cyan wasn’t sure how to deal with this revelation or being trapped in MedBay with Black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight delay on the chapter but it's a big one of over 10k! I hope you like it. Only one more chapter left after this.

Black wasn’t sure why he did it. It was almost perfectly panned out to be the plan that White had laid down, but the _almost_ was crucial. It changed everything.

White had always been good at reading humans’ stress levels so it wasn’t surprising that he had picked up on Brown’s murderous intentions but it was almost impressive that Black had managed stumble right in on them in action.

It had been so close. Cyan was losing, he would die soon. Black had been able to hear from outside the door.

He had even walked away, heading back down towards the upper engine, to be out of the way so he didn’t step in and break through the door like he had wanted to do. He had tried to force himself away, and to lie in wait for when Brown came out and take out the murderous crewmate. One attack from an imposter, but two deaths.

It would have been the perfect plan.

Instead, something in Black snapped and he headed further down the hallway and into security where he jumped into the vent and found his way back into MedBay. At that point he had started trying to rationalise that he was just wanting to speed the process along and surely Brown would get the upper hand soon. He would just be standing ready in the vents. Waiting.

Cyan didn’t stand a chance against Brown. Everything that Black had learned about Cyan had taught him that the man was too soft to kill anyone. He was too compassionate, terrified of hurting innocents and he tried to talk his way out of problems rather than use force of any kind.

It wasn’t what Black had been taught about humans growing up. It was all weak qualities that would leave them vulnerable. Such qualities should have died out eventually, evolution doing its part. Instead, they had somehow thrived in a modern human and Black had been picking up on more of it in the rest of the crew too for the first time ever. As soon as Cyan had opened his eyes to it, he had seen it far too often.

It was disconcerting.

When Brown was ready to deal the killing blow, Black moved without thinking. He got out of the vent at impressive speed and he was pulling Brown back like he was a mother protecting her egg.

It was the only comparison he had. The only time that his race was protective like that, when it came down to procreation. Once the eggs turned into babies, they were on their own, tough from birth, but the other part was an instinctive biological instinctive behaviour to ensure the survival of the species. The moment you could breathe, you were on your own but eggs were defenceless and they needed someone to protect them.

The alarm stopped blaring as Black pulled Brown back against him and crushed his whole body. It was a more hands-on and violent approach than Black would usually do but it felt like something in him had snapped and he needed to get it out somehow.

It did feel better to snap every single bone in Brown’s body.

Brown had been about to kill Cyan.

Sweet and gentle Cyan who apologised too much and cared too much. Cyan who was both sharp and quick but too focused on helping others to make himself thrive. He would have died or been killed if he had grown up with Black and his like and yet…

And yet, Black found such undeniable strength and beauty in the choice to be soft and kind when the world was so hard and cruel.

The world would have been a little lesser without Cyan in it. Black couldn’t allow it to happen when he had the power to stop it. He had tried, he really had, but there was no denying it anymore.

Black cared for Cyan more than was appropriate given their enemy species. He wanted to protect him and learn from him and spend time with him. He wanted to properly know him without any barriers.

He had never ever felt like this before.

Black dropped the body and let himself look at Cyan as this realisation washed over his whole being. Cyan was a mess, and yet Black just felt more affection bloom in his chest.

Cyan’s heart was running wild, he was drenched in the scent of fear and he couldn’t take his eyes off the body of the crewmate who had been about to kill him before Black stepped in.

Cyan lifted his face to look at Black and for once Black wasn’t at all wondering what expression he would be wearing behind the visor, because it would not have been a kind one.

Black had fucked up.

Black wasn’t moving. He was just standing there. Too still. Inhumanely still, which made sense for the first time. He wasn’t a human.

While Cyan had suspected it, it was something else to be faced with the certainty of it. To watch Black just kill so powerfully and without an ounce of hesitation.

Cyan had never quite been so scared or so relieved at the same time. It was an odd mix of emotions in his chest. The fear took a front row seat while the relief was diminishing with each breath but it was still there all the same. Existing for a brief moment in unison.

Black had saved his life. He had likely done so to claim it for himself but he had temporarily saved it all the same. He was the reason Cyan was breathing right now.

Cyan wasn’t quite sure how one was supposed to prepare for death twice within the span of as many minutes. It was too much for his brain to process.

It was like his strength left him, legs crumbling under him as he slid down the wall. Black still didn’t move from his spot in the middle of the room.

Cyan had so many questions. He wanted to know why Black was here. He wanted to know if there was another imposter as well. He wanted to know why Black hadn’t killed him when they had been alone together yesterday.

He wasn’t sure how to voice any of them. The fear of death was gripping him entirely too hard. The MedBay was quiet, just the gentle sum of the machine analysing samples that Cyan would never get to check the results of.

He wondered if the others were okay. If young Purple and wise Green were still safely together. If Red and Blue had been ambushed. Ah, Cyan was suddenly pretty sure that he had figured out the last imposter on his own. Black was here without a partner but with the sabotage it wasn’t likely that Black had killed White. It was more likely that this was an elaborate set up.

“White is the other imposter, isn’t he?” Cyan asked, and that was not what he had expected to come out of his mouth.

Honestly, something was better than nothing, so he was making no complaints.

Black finally moved, just a little, when his head tilted to the side. Cyan wasn’t expecting an answer. Why would he? Black wasn’t obligated to tell him anything even if he was planning to kill him and the information couldn’t go anywhere.

Cyan had never quite understood the evil monologue trope in old movies either.

“Yes.”

Black’s voice didn’t sound any different. He sounded human. He looked human in his space suit. It was a perfect replica, or maybe even one of their own. How deep had the aliens infiltrated MIRA without anyone formally warning the crew and staff about it? Cyan thought bitterly that it was just like them to conceal something like this.

And then he decided that he refused to spend his last few breaths being angry and bitter. It didn’t matter that this might have been able to be prevented if MIRA had done a better job, or if him and the rest of the crew had figured out the imposters sooner. Time travel wasn’t possible, at least not for humans. He couldn’t go back and change it.

With strength he didn’t know he still had in him, Cyan managed to push himself up on his feet again. Damned if he was going to die on his knees.

Still, he had to lean against the wall for support. It was a small compromise.

“Isn’t it ridiculous that I always thought of so many questions to ask an alien species if I ever got to communicate with one, and now I can’t get any of them out? Granted, I never thought it would be under these circumstances,” Cyan said and let out a shaky breath.

He could push away the bitterness, the resentment and the anger but the fear was a different kind of beast. It was still holding onto him so tightly.

“You’re scared,” Black said, and his words sounded something between a cross of a statement and a question.

Cyan wasn’t sure if Black expected an answer. Probably not but he was going to give one anyway.

“Yes,” Cyan said and he was proud of how steady his voice came out.

In that moment, he remembered the communication device in his suit, just a touch away. He might be able to get to it and get enough words out to warn the others of Black and White’s identities. But if there were only a couple of them left? They probably wouldn’t stand a chance against the imposters either way.

It would also make Black deal the killing blow and Cyan wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye yet.

To the world at large but also to Black.

It was ridiculous to feel any sort of attachment to your future murderer but Cyan had long since given up understanding the intricacies of his human heart. He had been intrigued by Black, by his behaviour and his curiosity. He had been endeared and he had wanted to talk to him more. To get to know him. Even when he had started to suspect Black’s true nature, he had still not been able to stop himself from talking and asking.

Too curious for his own good was a very apt description of him, he finally conceded.

“He was going to kill you,” Black said, pointing at Brown at his feet.

Cyan wasn’t looking down. He didn’t want to see it and be reminded that it would be him in a moment. Cyan wondered if that kind of death hurt, and if he could ask Black for a quick and painless one at least.

Cyan thought that Black would at least have compassion enough to do that.

He didn’t know it was a concept familiar to Black but surely, he had observed it by pretending to be a human. Humans thrived and survived on compassion. They were not built to survive on their own and they only advanced because they would work together.

“He thought I was the imposter,” Cyan said. He could feel that his helmet was fogging up and his voice sounded tight and wet now. Acceptance must be setting in. “He thought he was saving everyone by killing me. I can’t blame him for trying to do the right thing, even if he was mistaken and misguided.”

“Why do you always do that?” Black asked and Cyan startled a little at the bluntness of the question.

It was odd to see, how his body expressed confusion instead of radiating fear for just a moment. Black like the change. He didn’t want Cyan to be afraid of him, even if it was objectively the overall goal.

White and Black had been sent here to strike fear in the heart of humanity to ensure that they would stop their aggressive expansion and claiming of the universe that didn’t belong to them. These missions were meant to make the humans cautious.

“What do you mean?” Cyan asked and in that moment, he sounded more like himself. Less like a shaken shell.

“You forgive everyone. You help everyone. Even when it’s actively bad for you, you do it. You give so much of yourself to everyone, so freely and without ever expecting anything back. How does it serve you?” Black asked, something he had been curious about since he had started to notice Cyan.

A small chuckle escaped Cyan’s mouth. It sounded a little too high-pitched, like a sound of disbelief, but Black liked it all the same.

“It doesn’t serve me, not really. Unless you want to get into a philosophical discussion of whether any act of service is something you do to make yourself feel good. A good will thing.”

“Feel good, good will?”

Cyan hesitated for a moment. Black wasn’t sure if he was going to answer but then he did.

“Helping other feels nice. It’s… how we are. We’re social animals. We only made it this far because we help each other and look after each other. Compassion and kindness should be at the heart of our society at all times, even if it does get pushed aside by greed and selfishness of those in power sometimes.”

It was too many words to process at the same time. Black technically knew what they meant individually, having masted the human language before being send out on missions but it still didn’t make sense.

Had Black and White and all the others like them only been taught about the humans in power? The ones making the big decisions? The superiors? Were the humans at large entirely different? Were they more like Cyan than the horror stories he had been taught? Had Black just never learned to pay attention to all the little things before something so bright and undeniable had walked right in front of him?

Had they really been killing beings that wished them no harm? Black had been told that every crewmate on any mission had been trained to expand their own territory and destroy anything in their way. Every single human in a space suit was an active threat.

“You don’t know much about us, do you?” Cyan asked, and his tone wasn’t mocking like the words might suggest. It was gentle. It was always so damn gentle. “It’s only fair. We don’t know anything about you either.”

“We do know about you,” Black felt compelled to say, to correct. He should be saying nothing like this. He should be killing Cyan but it was too difficult. It made his whole body hurt to just think about it. “Or… I thought we knew about you. We know of your space explorations, your colonies on other planets and all of your experiments. You force the inhabitants away from their homes ruthlessly and you won’t stop before you’ve conquered the whole galaxy.”

“That’s what you’ve been taught?” Cyan asked and he sounded bemused. “I… I can’t say it sounds entirely inaccurate. We’re a curious species and when we find something new, we want to know all about it. It’s… a lot at times and I’m sure we are not as careful as we should be. If someone in charge smells a profit in one way or another, it can become the main goal real fast. But… please know that’s not all of us,” Cyan added almost pleadingly.

Like he desperately wanted Black to know it. Black didn’t understand.

“Why are you saying it like that? Like… begging me to understand?” Black asked confused.

Now Black wished that he could see Cyan’s face because it sounded like he was smiling when he next spoke.

“Because I want you to know the truth before you kill me.”

He said it so calmly, like he was getting used to the reality, despite the fear still in his bones and the rapid beat of his heart.

Black didn’t know how to explain that he didn’t even know how to go about killing Cyan. How he had tried multiple times, even just letting it happen passively and he been unable to stand by and let it happen.

A message popped up in Black’s suit.

White had successfully managed to turn Red and Blue against each other. He had stirred up an argument between them and they had attacked and killed each other. With them both dead, White was going to frame the whole situation like they were two imposters who had gotten angry with each other and fought. He wanted to lull the remaining humans into a false sense of security.

Two imposters and three crewmates remained.

Black was meant to bring that down to two. He couldn’t do it.

No.

He _wouldn’t_ do it.

That was a difference that mattered to someone who had always done what they were told. For the first time, he was fully consciously and willingly disobeying an order. It had been with every interaction with Cyan but he had always found some excuse.

Now he didn’t have one anymore, and he wasn’t trying to find justifications. He just wanted to do what felt right. 

Something changed in the air and Cyan thought this would be it. He wondered if it would make sense to even right against something that had so much superior strength at the very least and potentially even more ways to hurt him. In the end, he would just have to go with his gut reaction.

Fight, flight or freeze. He wasn’t sure which one he would land on right now but either would be alright, since he didn’t deem that any of them could really get out of this.

The only thing that might work could be to bargain but Cyan wasn’t sure that he could offer Black something that he wanted. He had already pieced together what Black and White’s mission had been in infiltrating this ship. To prevent humans from expanding through the galaxy and forcing the native habitants away.

Maybe they were getting close to Black’s home planets or maybe their species was another colonising one and they didn’t want competition. Even if Cyan could get the answers, then it wouldn’t matter much.

They were just two living being trapped in a room. The whole feuding was wasn’t on them. Cyan had a distinct feeling that both of them might just be pawns being moved around.

Pawns got sacrificed and wiped off the table early on without anyone paying it much concern.

“Did you kill both Yellow and Pink too?” Cyan found himself asking when the silence dragged on and Black still hadn’t moved.

The thought turned Cyan’s stomach. He had invited Black to do the funeral rites with him. To help grant the lost souls peace in their afterlife. He might have invited their murderer to help wish them well. If he wasn’t haunted before, he would definitely be it now.

“Just one of them,” Black said and it sounded almost like remorse, or maybe Cyan was just falling for his tricks.

“Did you hesitate then too?” Cyan asked because as charged as the moment felt, there was an air of uncertainty as well. Cyan couldn’t pin it down, he couldn’t figure out Black’s game plan.

If he had one.

He had seemed like the person who would have a game plan, approaching problems with a no-nonsense attitude. It could have been a cover as well, of course, but the mere existence of a cover also spoke to planning.

“I didn’t hesitate,” Black said. “I killed her quick and clean. Like we’ve been trained to do.”

Cyan found himself wondering how young Black had been when he had been trained to kill, mercilessly. Their lifespans might be entirely different. Black could be young or old for his species, Cyan had no way of figuring that out. But something about the way he spoke made Cyan feel like this as normal, and a trained behaviour.

It oddly reminded him of the concept of child soldiers and he wanted to vomit.

“You’re hesitating now,” Cyan said, trying to gauge if it would be worth it to try to get a few words out to the comms.

The alarm had stopped blaring a little while ago. Cyan had a feeling there might be another body already, excluding Brown who was still at Black’s feet.

“I am,” Black confirmed but didn’t elaborate.

Cyan didn’t know why he would think that answer was sufficient. It wasn’t. He spoke as if those two words were enough to reveal his intention and his reasoning all in one. It wasn’t. At least not to Cyan.

“Why?” Cyan pressed, and he belatedly realised that his racing heart had started to calm down just a little. He was leaning forward too, towards the murdering alien. He must be losing his mind.

Black moved and it was so startling that Cyan flinched a little. Black could be moving from unnaturally still to being right in front of Cyan in just a split second. Cyan pressed himself back against the wall and now his heart went back to racing, probably even faster than before.

Black wasn’t close enough to touch but he was nearly there. If Cyan hadn’t plastered himself against the wall, then they would have been touching.

Funny thing was that Cyan didn’t move his hand up in defence, reach for his knife or his button to comms or anything else. He just let Black corner him. It would be a quick death at least.

“I am not going to kill you,” Black told him and Cyan felt like the whole world flipped upside down.

He was so surprised that he was jolted back into his senses and surprisingly he found himself showing Black away, almost angrily. Cyan pushed on his shoulder but Black didn’t move, not an inch. He didn’t weaver any bit under the push and Cyan had to just pull his hands back.

“What game are you playing?” Cyan demanded to know. He was angry. He was red hot with rage and he felt that was reasonable. He was even angrier than when he had realised that he would have to die.

He didn’t like things that didn’t make sense or took him by surprise. He didn’t like uncertainty or the unknown. He had spent his whole life tinkering and figuring out how thing fit together so he would never be caught unaware. 

“No game,” Black said and took a step back, almost like he wanted to give Cyan space.

“What then?” Cyan asked, thankful for the breathing room but still glaring.

He wasn’t sure how to react to any of this. He had been preparing himself mentally for minutes on end and now he was just going to get hit with some cryptic bullshit and then probably stabbed in the back.

He wasn’t sure why that made him even angrier than the thought of Black just murdering him, but it did. He didn’t want to be toyed with and strung along. He already felt like that had happened when Black had pretended ever since they met.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Black said, stepping back even further.

Cyan grew so angry and it was a welcome relief from the fear. If he had been a violent person, he might have wanted to hit something, but he wasn’t.

When he felt pushed up into a corner, he didn’t strike outwards. He struck inwards and it was happening right now again. He was tearing at himself trying to understand, and his brain was somehow trying to make him responsible for this.

He wasn’t but that was how it felt like.

“I just want you to tell me the truth,” Cyan said, brave enough now to take a step forward, away from the wall he had needed to lean on. Black didn’t react. Didn’t back up or come forward.

Just stood there looking as lost and confused as Cyan felt.

“You say that as if it is a simple thing,” Black said, voice deep with contemplation. He noticed how Cyan almost startled a little. “You humans and your truth. You speak as if there is one universal truth in our universe. There is not. There are many truths depending on who you ask. I have never bothered to ask. I always thought the truth that I was taught was the proper one and everyone else were just mistaken, misguided unfortunate souls. Now… I see that I might have been played for a fool, being taught that we were the superior ones, the ones who were always right. What is the likelihood of that? Us always being in the right? Among so many truths?”

Black shouldn’t say any of this but he wanted to spill his guts. He wanted to let it all out, lay it bare for Cyan to see, even if he had been taught to do the exact opposite.

“It… doesn’t sound likely,” Cyan said, but his voice sounded far away like he was contemplating something too.

He sounded less scared now, which was an improvement. He sounded angry though, both before and now. It was brimming under the surface. Black had noticed such anger in other humans and other species as well. He had been ready for a blow, for Cyan to come furiously charging at him but he hadn’t.

Instead, he had balled up his fists, twisting his shoulders inwards and looked in physical pain. He wasn’t hurting others; he was hurting himself. Black wondered how anyone would be capable of moving to kill someone like that.

“You are correct,” Black said and tentatively continued. He should be picking up the pace because White would be here soon and he would be angry. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been properly angry yet, when Black had come back last night but this would do it. Walking in on this would send his white-clad partner into a killing frenzy run purely on rage. Black would have to defend himself as well. “I believe I have been misled about you and your intentions. I do not want to kill you.”

“You literally just killed someone,” Cyan pointed out, eyes still unable to look down at Brown’s corpse.

Black couldn’t understand why Cyan sounded angry when he had done that act in defence of Cyan. But perhaps, Black still had much to learn about the soft-heartedness of some humans.

He wasn’t sure how to answer so Cyan wouldn’t be mad but he had to try to speak his perspective all the same.

“He was going to kill you,” Black said. A simple truth at least, in all of this mess. “I didn’t want you to die.”

“Yes,” Cyan said and then he walked up closer to him, within striking range but arms still at his sides. “But you did not have to kill him. I suspect you have more than enough strength to subdue without killing.”

It was not what Black had expected.

In all honesty, he had expected gratitude at first but Cyan’s reaction had told that would be far off. He hadn’t counted on Cyan taking the defence of his would-be murderer.

“I did not consider that option,” Black said honestly.

Subduing and retaining wasn’t something they had been taught. Too bothersome. It was easier to just strike to kill. That way you didn’t leave enemies behind you that could come back to finish the job if they got free.

“You didn’t-” Cyan said and sounded astonished. Angry again, but then he let out a deep breath and something changed. Turned a little gentler. “You really are different from us, aren’t you? You were just taught to kill as a first option?”

“Only option,” Black corrected, slightly worried about the reaction. 

Cyan surprised him but suddenly sitting down on the floor, squaring first but then moving to sit cross-legged. Black wasn’t sure what was up with that but he mirrored the movement all the same.

Cyan seemed surprised. Black was sure he was about to be asked what he was doing, which was unfortunate because he did not have an answer.

Cyan didn’t ask that.

“Are you really not going to kill me?”

“I am not going to kill you,” Black confirmed.

“Are you going to kill any of the remaining crew?”

Black thought for a moment. He wanted to say that he would if they came to kill Cyan because there was a fierce protectiveness in his chest, but he had a feeling that Cyan wouldn’t like that.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Black said instead.

Cyan swore under his breath and sounded on edge. Worried and torn, but it was still better than terrified. Black could literally see him letting his guard down, being less on edge and it was good even if Black wanted to remind him to still be cautious.

Cyan seemed to just be trusting his word. Black could be playing him. He wasn’t but he could have been. He wanted to remind Cyan never to trust anyone, but it would be stupid when he was trying to get the human’s trust.

He would teach him never to trust anyone else, afterwards.

“What about White? What is he going to do?”

Black had kind of hoped that he wouldn’t ask that. He was still trying to figure out how he could pacify White but he had a feeling that it would have to end in blood. White would not understand, he was too loyal to their superiors. He would kill Black for his transgressions too.

“He’s going to try to kill you all. Us all.”

“You too?” Cyan asked in surprise.

Black moved his shoulder, an imitated shrug that he had learned from humans.

“I’m a traitor. He will not take kindly to me fucking up the chance to kill you twice. I talked myself out of it last time but there are no more chances to be granted.”

“Wait, he’s out there right now, isn’t he?” Cyan said, standing up and moving to grab Black’s arm to pull him up as well. When he seemed to realise what he was doing, he stepped back and let go. “We have to go the others, protect them and-”

“Red and Blue are already dead,” Black added in a low voice, he didn’t want to have to tell Cyan but it was unavoidable.

It was like the words struck him, made his whole body jolt and go tense. Only for a moment though and after a quick exhale that sounded a little wobbly, Cyan seemed to put himself together as fast as he had fallen apart.

He walked over to the door leading out of MedBay and started to type his password. He was turning his back towards Black, not even looking over his shoulder. Cyan was wicked smart but also entirely too trusting.

He would need someone to watch his back. Black would gladly do it.

“And Purple and Green?” Cyan asked, as the door slid open.

“I don’t know,” Black said. “But probably not.”

“Here’s the plan,” Cyan said, walking swiftly to the left and towards the upper engine. The same path that Black had walked when he had been trying to walk away from Cyan’s imminent murder. “We are going to call an emergency meeting and we four are going to vote White off.”

Black wasn’t sure if that was a very smart plan. He wasn’t sure that White wouldn’t want to go on a frantic killing spree the moment he realised that there were only three crewmates left. It would be so easy to kill.

Well, it would have been easy if Black had still been inclined to kill them. He didn’t want to. Cyan seemed protective of both Purple and Green and as such Black felt like that protectiveness extended to him because of his attachment to Cyan.

“He will not like that,” Black warned.

“You can hold him, can’t you?”

“We’re equally matched in strength,” Black admitted.

It was a coin toss which of them would come up on the flip side if they went head to head. Black supposed that was fair, and he might be willing to die. It would have been a warrior’s death if not for the fact that he was already a traitor.

“Well, then good you’ve got three humans on your side then,” Cyan said so casually as they marched down the hall.

Black wasn’t even sure that he realised the gravity of what he had said but he didn’t want to call attention to it. They moved down past security and electrical which were both empty and Cyan gave almost a joyous shout when they came further down and saw Green and Purple refilling the lower engine.

Cyan did actually break into a run and almost crash into Purple while pulling them into a hug.

“Huh?” Purple said, dropping the fuel container they had been holding. Luckily, Green’s robot was quick, moving under the two hugging crewmates to catch it.

Cyan soon let go of Purple and leaned over to put a hand on Green’s shoulder.

A message came in Black’s helmet.

“Heading your way now, I see a cluster of heat signatures on the map. Let’s have fun,” White chuckled before cutting the line.

“He’s on his way,” Black urgently told Cyan.

Cyan couldn’t hold back the flinch. Of course. Of course, they were running out of time. He shouldn’t even have been surprised. He had wasted so much time just talking with Black in MedBay but he couldn’t even bring himself to regret it.

They had needed to talk. Cyan had needed the time to try to gauge Black’s sincerity. He still wasn’t completely sure. He couldn’t be with something as important as this but he did know that he would rather put his trust in Black than trying to go up against White alone. Once they got White out of the way, they would figure out how to proceed.

Cyan just hoped that Black wouldn’t falter when he came to turning against his own. It was too big an ask, unreasonable really, but Cyan didn’t have any other choice but to ask it. It was a matter of survival.

So many were dead already. Yellow. Pink. Brown. Red. Blue.

They were down to half a crew. This was a nightmare.

“Okay, listen to me and listen carefully,” Cyan told Purple and Green grabbing on to each of their arms. “We need to kick White out. He just killed Red and Blue in electrical.”

“What?” Purple asked, sounding terrified and looking around like White might pop out from the wall.

He wouldn’t but he might pop out from the vent in the corner of the room.

“You know for sure?” Green asked and her robot made a curious sound as well.

“I know,” Cyan said.

“And Brown?” Green pressed. Purple had gone speechless.

“Dead too,” Cyan said.

“WHAT!” Purple shouted and now they were hanging on tightly to Cyan’s arm.

“We’re running out of time,” Black reminded him, as if he needed the reminder.

“Listen, I know it’s a lot and you shouldn’t trust anyone but please, please, we have to get White out. We do that first and then… then we’ll figure it all out,” Cyan said.

Purple seemed outside of reach, flinching and breathing heavily. Green had gone very quiet and it seemed like she was mulling over the words.

“We have to discover the bodies,” she said eventually.

“Okay, we’ll just-”

“A party?” a voice called and Cyan had never had to work so hard to not react with terror. Purple did a much worse job, moving to hide behind Black who still hovered near them. Cyan felt a little bad about Purple seeking refuge with another imposter but he needed to take things one thing at a time.

“There’s a body in MedBay. Brown is dead,” Cyan said, shoving himself past Black and Green who had been blocking him slightly from view.

Cyan felt like a chill went through the air when he stepped out and White got a good look at him. He went eerily still, just like Black did at times and now that you knew it was so glaringly obvious that it wasn’t even funny.

Cyan wondered if he would be killed right there, even with at least two witnesses that White knew would be shocked. No one moved for a second, tension just building in the air around them.

“If there’s a body in MedBay why are you all here?” White asked, cold and calculated voice. Still playing a crewmate though. It was good. It could work.

“Because he tried to kill me first and I was a little fucking shaken after I killed him,” Cyan lied.

He was a decent liar but White still didn’t seem to buy it. He was not looking at Black because that would be too obvious but the personal comms did click open.

“What the fuck did you do?” White hissed out, furious. “Again?”

“Wait, you killed Brown?” Purple asked, leaning closer into Black.

Black almost wanted to shove away the newbie, he was really clinging to the wrong being right now. He would have been better off with Green or her robot. He would be better off with Cyan who was lying about being capable of murder.

“You know you will have to face consequences for that,” Green said solemnly and she was a better actress. “We can’t let that kind of thing slide. We have to hold an emergency meeting. You will make your case and we will have to vote.”

“But-but, it was self-defence, right?” Purple asked, suddenly only concerned with their new friend and seemingly forgetting about the very real imposter problem.

“Answer me,” White demanded in their private chat, as the others spoke. “Why have you failed to kill Cyan?”

Black didn’t want to answer, because he needed to adjust his answer to whatever strategy that Cyan had set but not had a chance to properly explain.

“He was too quick,” Black lied. “I didn’t think he’d get the upper hand on Brown.”

“He wouldn’t,” White shot back. “Much too soft.”

White would probably have said more but he had to focus on the conversation in front of him when Cyan called his name.

“What?” White asked.

“I asked, did you see Red and Blue? Black found the three of us together after he explained that you split up.”

“What did he say about us splitting up?” White asked, breaking his cover a little but probably only because he was fuming.

“Black thought it was silly and overprotective to have to be partnered up at all times, so he split off to do his own tasks,” Cyan said and that lie seemed to fall pretty easily.

It was fascinating to watch really, someone who was so sincere but still lying their ass off. Black wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or impressed. White was not entirely buying it but he was not entirely dismissing it either.

“I have not seen Red and Blue,” White said, a clear lie but his lie was flawless.

It was only a shame that the three humans already knew the truth.

“Well, we should be able to find them soon enough,” Green said, voice still calm and collected like always. “Bub, call an emergency meeting.”

“Wait, your robot can-” White started to ask but he was quickly cut off from a blaring sound.

The emergency meeting siren that echoed throughout the whole ship. Everyone knew that neither Red or Blue would be back but everyone was pretending that they didn’t know that. Purple was holding up the worst, being quiet but shaking all over. The only good thing was that they had been worried and scared already before the revelation so it wasn’t too far out of their character.

“Let’s go to the cafeteria together,” Green said. “And then hope Red and Blue will arrive at the same time.”

It was a long and quiet walk up to the cafeteria and White used that opportunity to shout at Black in the private line. Black let him get some profanities and rage out and then he put on his own acting mask.

He tried not to think too much about how he was betraying his own kind by doing this.

“Would you relax?” Black hissed. “This is good, right? We will get to vote Cyan off for killing Brown.”

“Oh, as if those two blobs will send their friend to space,” White shot back.

“They will,” Black insisted. “You see how scared Purple is, they will vote and so will we. It is all that is needed. But first we will go find Red and Blue having torn into each other, right? You staged it to look like they were imposters, so they will think they are all safe. With Cyan out in space, there are only two crew left. We win.”

“You are making it all too messy,” White complained. “And I don’t buy this was your strategy the whole time. You don’t make up a strategy on the fly. You have never done that. You stick to the plan. What is so different this time?”

Not what, Black would have had to explain. It had never been a what. It had been a who. He couldn’t tell that to White, of course.

It was lucky that he didn’t need to because they reached the cafeteria and Red and Blue were nowhere to be found.

“Oh no,” Purple said, “this is bad news, right?”

It was surprisingly decent acting, perhaps because they were a terrified person, playing terrified.

“So, what are we going to do now?” Black asked.

Green took charge like she always did.

“We look for them,” she said, “and we start in O2 since that was last that we had any contact with them. “And we all go. No one is left alone anymore; I don’t care if the ship is coming apart. We move as one.”

White muted himself to the rest of the crew and then let out a threateningly growl that only Black could hear.

Cyan knew that Blue and Red were dead but it still didn’t mean that he looked forward to finding their bodies. He hadn’t doubted Black’s word. He had literally no reason to lie anymore.

The only way would be if this was some big elaborate ploy to gain trust and get just a couple of humans close and get them to trust an imposter, a hostile alien. It was technically still possible, Cyan had meant it when he had warned Purple not to trust anyone, but he was still mostly sure that it wasn’t what was happening here.

Black had gone through an awful lot of trouble with an awful lot of variables that he hadn’t been able to control. As such, Cyan accepted Black’s perspective even if he was still scared and worried how this would end for all of them.

He hoped that it wouldn’t end like it did for Blue and Red who laid torn open, a mess of mangled bodies in the corridor outside of O2. Cyan had to keep a tight grip on himself so that he did not crumble.

He wanted to vomit. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream.

Most of all, he wanted to glare at White and come charging at him, to shake him by his shoulders and demand an explanation for why he would do something like this. White would kill him before he could get a word out probably.

He might have better luck with Black, who seemed to have gotten a soft spot for him. Cyan wasn’t sure when that had happened, or how when they were so different, but maybe that was hypocritical of him to say when he had felt something for Black too. A spark of interest. A desire to know more. He had liked him upon first meeting him and that somehow hadn’t stopped even after witnessing Black defend Cyan’s life by straight up murder.

It was something that would need to be handled later.

For now, Cyan was almost glad that Purple was suddenly in his arms, pressing their helmet into Cyan’s shoulder and crying. It was horrible of course, but it gave Cyan something else to focus on. He had always been good at comforting others.

He had never been that good at comforting himself.

Empty words, _it’s okays_ , sat heavy on his tongue but he didn’t let any of them slip out. Three humans against two strong aliens who had killed without remorse. The odds were not in their favour.

The only reason they had a chance was because of Black choosing to back them. If Black changed his mind at any point, they would be fucked. Cyan wanted to open a private channel to Black to talk to him, to get reassurance but it was too risky.

Cyan pulled Purple away from the mangled bodies. They looked like they had been in a fight, tearing through each other’s jumpsuits.

If you didn’t know better, you might think that they were two imposters who had torn each other to pieces, even if Cyan would normally have posed questions upon seeing how insanely human they still appeared even dead.

Green went into leader mode and she knew how to put up a front well. Cyan couldn’t catch a single crack in her armour. White stepped up to help to, the two of them discussing what to do with the bodies and how to proceed in general. Black remained silent but he had always done so in discussions, choosing to sit back and just observe.

Cyan felt the eyes on him now, as he cradled Purple against his chest and hoped that the young crewmate could keep up the charade a little while longer. At least the sight of Blue and Red’s bodies were enough explanation for how he would be so terrified right now.

“It does appear like they might have been two imposters,” Green said carefully, scanning the bodies for clues.

“What else could do that to a human body?” White chimed in.

He sounded so normal. A perfect act. A perfect imposter.

“I don’t know,” Green said and shook her head. “But at least… it should mean good things for us. Surely, there cannot be more than two imposters on the ship?”

“We can’t know that,” Cyan said, making himself speak up despite the fear in his gut. He had to play his part too and that included speaking up when he was seeing someone close to making a mistake. “We need to test their bodies for foreign substances. Maybe, they were infected with something.”

“No,” Purple mumbled, clearly terrified, still leaning on Cyan’s shoulder.

“We have more urgent business though,” Black said and Cyan snapped to look at him.

“I’m afraid Black is right, Cyan,” Green said. “We have to evaluate the implications of your actions first.”

“My act of self-defence is more important than two dead bodies?” Cyan asked, letting himself bristle and sound close to snapping. It wasn’t far from the truth, even if it was for a different reason.

“Likely two imposter bodies,” Green corrected, not unkindly.

Cyan’s head was spinning and his chest was tight. It was all a play. They were all playing their pieces. It was okay. He just needed to remember to breathe.

“Can we leave?” Purple asked, in a small voice. “I-I want to leave.”

They decided to leave the bodies behind without anyone causing a fuss. Blue or Red would have caused a fuss if they were still alive. They would have shouted and thrown accusations but they wouldn’t have cared about Cyan’s trial when there were aliens to worry about.

As much as Cyan hadn’t liked them, he felt the grief hit him squarely in the chest. They were gone. He would never hear them bicker and shout again. Wiped from existence so quickly and so yet so painfully by the looks of it.

By one of the two imposters currently walking in front of him, and he had seen the other commit a gruesome murder too. He was in way over his head. He wanted to lie down, or just knock himself out but he had to stay level-headed.

He had to stay calm. He never had another choice.

Someone like Black could come in, a storm in a body, and just act. Just go and tear up everything in his path with little regard for the chaos he left behind.

Cyan had never been one to cause storms, he had only learned how to calm them.

He would have to put those skills to the test now.

Sitting around the cafeteria table felt wrong. It was too empty. Ten had dwindled to five in just over a day. So many lives lost so quickly and now the three remaining human hearts around the table were at risk to stop beating as well, if any small thing went wrong.

The odds felt like they had never been in their favour and they were destined to fail no matter how this turned out.

“Let us hear your defence,” Green requested.

White and Green were watching him keenly, while Purple was just looking down into the table and Black sat a little too still, tense but not looking directly at Cyan.

He forced himself to take a breath and then begun spinning a tale that was close to the truth but fiction in the most important parts.

“Brown thought I was an imposter,” Cyan started. Black couldn’t look directly at him, too worried that something in his body language might expose him. “We went around the Skeld doing out tasks, or well, I was mostly doing the tasks and he was keeping an eye out. I didn’t think I would have to watch out for him attacking me,” Cyan added with a bitter laugh.

It sounded genuine. Either Cyan was a better actor than Black had thought, or he was channelling the emotions from another situation. Black wondered if it was related to him, maybe he blamed Black for having tricked him.

This leaving people alive business sure was more complicated than just killing the humans.

“He suggested we did another one of my tasks so I told him I’d have to go check the samples in MedBay. Oh, those should almost be done now, actually. Not that it matters now,” Cyan said, shaking his head. He seemed genuinely distraught, a bit of his calm armour cracking. It was making something in Black’s chest crack too. “He… he came for me with his knife, throwing out accusations. He said that he knew I was the imposter and that he was going to protect you all by taking me out. It… I-I don’t blame him. He thought he was doing the right thing to protect all of the crew. He wasn’t acting out of mean will. Just fear.”

Cyan said it so simply. This time Black didn’t ask how Cyan could forgive someone who had actively tried to murder him, but he did watch closely for the other’s reactions. Purple lifted their head, glancing over at Cyan, while Green let out a hum. White just watched.

The private line opened between the two imposters.

“What a fucking weakling,” White’s voice said.

“I know,” Black replied back but it didn’t come out right. It didn’t come out like proper agreement or as snarky or as mean as White had meant it. It came out soft, almost fond instead. Black was messing up; he was revealing too much.

He was finding this kind of compassion and kindness attractive and desirable, instead of seeing it as a weakness. If he went back to his home planet and they learned of this, they would put him through experiments and try to figure out where it had gone wrong in his brain.

What the humans could possibly have done to manipulate him into believing the opposite of what he had been raised to believe in. They would call it an infection. A disease. They would try to correct him, make him “back to normal”.

But now that he’s seen what could be instead and he was starting to realise how he made him feel, he wasn’t so keen to go back. He was starting to think that maybe his superiors had it wrong.

Both about the humans but also about themselves.

Or maybe, Cyan was just making him become idealistic.

“I managed to wrestle the knife out of Brown’s hand, and stabbed him instead,” Cyan said, having continued with his story while Black was having a mini-existential crisis. “I didn’t mean to kill him, only disarm him, but… the knife went right through a weak point. He stumbled back and collapsed.”

Cyan was clutching onto his knees as best he could with the thick gloves over his hands. He looked shaken and Black wasn’t doubting that it was real. He had seen how torn up Cyan had been about Yellow and Pink. He would probably likewise want to grieve Brown, Red and Blue. He might already be doing that.

“Wait, did anyone else see the body?” White asked. “How do we know you’re not lying?”

“I found him, I saw it,” Black said, voice stern. He did not need White to kick up a fuss or argue that they all go look at the crumbled body in MedBay.

Most certainly because Brown was not dead from a stab wound but instead an injury that Cyan possibly couldn’t have created as a human. It would make things complicated because then White would know that Black had been the killer, and he outwardly question why Black hadn’t made sure to kill Cyan too. He was already simmering with anger, only contained because they had been taught not to let it cloud their efficiency.

“Shouldn’t we all check?” White pressed.

Black tensed and he wasn’t the only one. Purple started to shake. That crewmate was really entirely too fragile to be in space on missions that could easily turn dangerous if anyone would have asked Black. It was a new kind of thought too. It startled him a little, because the voice sounded like Cyan. Black had been taught that anyone who couldn’t keep up should be left behind.

It did seem rather cruel.

“I am more concerned with casting a quick vote on Cyan and then dealing with Red and Blue’s bodies,” Green said. “It is an easy call, is it not? It was self-defence.”

“But they killed someone,” Purple said, sounding terrified.

Not of Cyan probably but of the two aliens that they knew were at the table and had killed people on board. People onboard of other ships too, even if they couldn’t know that for sure.

“I… I am willing to accept whatever you all decide. I’ll skip the vote,” Cyan said, finally making his hands settle in his lap. “Actions can’t go unpunished. They have to have consequences.”

Black got the sense that Cyan was once more talking about something other than himself.

“Well, I agree with that,” White said, just a bit of smugness bleeding into his voice. “Humans should always pay for their crimes.”

If Black had still been on the same side as White, and seen him like a proper partner right now, he would have warned him off for being stupid. But in this situation, it didn’t matter. They just had to vote and then it would be easier.

“Okay, then… let’s vote,” Green said and pulled up the software.

It activated in their helmets and everyone waited until White had pressed first, which he did rather quickly. Then the votes fell fast, second, third, fourth and fifth vote fell swiftly pinging in one after another.

One vote for Cyan.

Four votes for White.

Silence as they all looked at the results.

For one beat.

Two beats.

Three be-

White rose out of his seat with a literal growl and Black hated knowing that he was about to test who would actually win in a fight. It had been a fun hypothetical question but it was a very dangerous reality that he did not look forward to putting to the test.

All the same, he rose from his seat too, moving to shield Cyan whom he had sat next to for this exact purpose. 

It was an inhumane sound from White and it chilled Cyan to his bones. He froze, like he couldn’t physically move and for a moment he wondered if the aliens actually were capable of making sounds that could legitimately paralyse them.

That flicker of a theory was quickly disproven when Purple managed to fall off their chair and land with a terrified scream while stumbling back. Green remained in her seat but her robot came up on the table, extending out its little arms a few joints and trying to look intimidating.

It took Cyan a moment to realise that Black was doing something similar for him, putting himself in between him and White.

“What are you all playing at?” White shouted, and Cyan wanted to cower and crawl into a ball. Purple had made it all the way across the cafeteria already in their scrambling, and were now pressing themselves against the wall.

“White,” Green said calmly but she didn’t get more out, before White snarled again.

He was dropping all the pretence it seemed, not like they hadn’t known.

“You,” White growled and Cyan was sure that he was talking to Black, which would make sense but instead, he was looking over Black’s shoulder, directly at Cyan.

“Me?” he asked confused and bewildered.

White tried to jump towards him but it was impossible with Black in the way. Black who grabbed hold of White and twisted him in a way that left a horrible sound ringing through the air.

It sounded different from Brown’s bones breaking, squishier, but it was a horrible sound all the same.

The two imposters scrambled away from the table, limbs locked around each other. There were snarling, and more sounds like squishy material being ripped. Cyan wanted to do something, interfere somehow to help but Green grabbed his arm when he tried to rise out of the seat.

He could only watch as Black and White tumbled around, on top of tables and into walls while snarling in a language that sounded much more guttural intermixed with high-pitched clicks.

“We have to do something,” Cyan argued, pulling on his arm.

His heart was in his throat. They looked matched in strength, both angry and vicious and clearly arguing. Cyan didn’t want Black to get hurt. He didn’t deserve that when he was trying to protect them now. No matter his earlier transgressions, he was doing something nice now and he shouldn’t pay for that with his life.

“We can’t do anything other than being torn to pieces,” Green argued, pulling Cyan back as White got free from Black and tried to leap in their direction. He was smacked down from Black landing on top of him before he got far, but it was enough that Green and Cyan were scrambling back.

“The airlock. We need them out,” Cyan said, pulling away from Green to near the wrestling aliens.

“Bad idea,” Green warned.

“No, it’s not,” Cyan argued and looked at the robot at their feet. “Bub, go to the airlock, get ready to open it, okay? I’m going to bring them over. Green, get Purple out of here before they have a heart attack. And take them to navigation, the Skeld is in good enough condition to fly at least a little after most of the repairs. We need to be able to move after we dump him.”

Green didn’t look like she liked that plan very much but she didn’t argue. Not with the plan or how Cyan said “him” and not “them” when talking about aliens that needed to be expelled from the spaceship. He didn’t even notice himself until he was running toward the crashing aliens.

“Hey!” he shouted. “White, are you so weak that you can’t even overpower one enemy?”

At the taunts, White let out another scary and inhumane noise and nearly managed to rip away from Black’s grip.

“Cyan,” Black called in warning, and Cyan was struck for a moment with the realisation that he had never heard anyone call out his name like that. Well, not his real name but it was all the same here on missions. He was Cyan and the name was spoken with such care and such warning.

“Watch me and Black take you down,” Cyan said, making sure to position himself in the direction of the airlock. “You’re nothing all on your own.”

White let out a battle cry and then managed to drag both himself and Black hanging onto his back across the small space. Cyan moved fast but not fast enough.

Something caught onto his shoulder, and the pain as it connected was sharp and it stung deep. Surely whatever had struck him was deep and horrible and it had torn up his suit but he didn’t let that stop him from moving.

He ran, two aliens hot on his heels, until he almost slammed into the wall.

“Bub!” Cyan called out the robot and it slammed down on the button that opened the door to the airlock.

Black saw that, or had already known that it would be Cyan’s plan and suddenly he was twisting around and flinging both himself and White inside before Cyan could even make sense of it.

Bub shut the door with them both inside and Cyan felt his heart stop. No, he couldn’t do this. It wasn’t meant to be both of them.

Black finally let go of his hold of White who slammed against the glass, but to no avail. It was strong. Probably one of the strongest parts of the Skeld. It would take a lot to break.

Bub let out a beeping sound and then Green’s voice came though.

“We’re in Navigation, status?”

“They’re in the airlock. Both of them,” Cyan said, feeling the pain in his shoulder and feeling beside himself in general.

He stared at snarling White who moved like he was possessed and completely ignored Black who was leaning against the wall. The airlock was soundproof too, so they couldn’t hear anything. Not anything at all.

“You have to press the button, Cyan,” Green said, voice commanding but kind.

“But…” Cyan said, wanting to argue but knowing that it was stupid. They couldn’t open the door. White would pull them apart and Black had barely managed to keep him from murdering them all.

Cyan looked over at Black. He wished he could see some kind of expression instead of just the opaque visor. He wanted to look Black in the eyes, even as he realised, he might not even have eyes like humans did.

He still wanted to reach out and make a connection one last time.

Say an apology. Say so many things.

There was so much they hadn’t gotten to do yet. So much he hadn’t gotten to figure out. He had endless questions about what this past hour had all meant. He wanted a better explanation for why Black had decided to change sides and not only spare Cyan’s life but save it.

There was a cracking sound, and Cyan looked in horror as the strong glass was starting to splinter and break under White’s repeated bounding. He was left with no choice.

He lowered his head and pressed the eject button. The airlock opened and Black and White were sucked out into space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm curious to see if anyone has picked up on the method to me naming chapters, or my little thing with the among us characters that separate the sections. And I'm sorry for the cliffhanger okay! I know it was mean but this chapter was getting so long and I wanted to get it up today! I've been waiting to write that reveal conversation between Black and Cyan from the very beginning and it was so much fun. 
> 
> And as for the last chapter, it might take me a bit more than a week to get it finished and up. As it's the final chapter, I don't want to rush it and I have another updating fic requiring a lot of my attention and a holiday exchange thing I have to do as well. But I promise I intend to get it up before Christmas and as soon as possible.


	7. Saboteur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Black was out floating in space and Cyan was panicking. He usually didn't panic in emergency situations but something about this particular scenario was making him panic. There was only one thing to do then: the very first thing that popped into his head. He had to go out into space and get Black back on this ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, I did not intend for more than a month to pass but I come baring this nearly 20k chapter, so I figure you will forgive me for the delay. Enjoy!
> 
> TW: Murder (you should probably expect that at this point), nothing else, I don't think. Lots of emotions.

In the infinite possibilities of how this mission could have gone, Black would never in his wildest guess have landed on this scenario. He was inside of the air lock with his fellow imposter team mate and he was watching gladly as a human ejected them out of the spaceship.

It was potentially the worst possible outcome out of any and yet Black was content with it. White had been so busy banging on the door, raging that he hadn’t prepared for the force that would pull them out.

Black had braced for it but it was still a weird feeling. He was usually in good control of his limbs and could stand steady on a lot of different types of ground but it was something else to be pulled into the vastness of space.

It was something they were warned away from while growing up. Space was cold and vast and empty. You did not want to be caught in it. His species would not suffocate like humans would but it would still lead to a slow and painful death.

Not that Black was counting on meeting that kind of end.

With the boosters activated in White’s boots, he came charging right at Black. He was snarling, growls and clicks in their own language, on the communication channel that still was open between the two of them.

Black only hoped that the two of them had gotten far enough away from the Skeld that the connection would not hold. Black grabbed hold of White and hissed back in equally angry words. He wasn’t defending himself, there was no point, White would never understand it or accept it. It was going against everything they had been taught. Black didn’t know how to explain, he didn’t know how to argue for his change.

The humans had a funny expression that he had never quite gotten before now. A change of heart. It had sounded ludicrous when he had first heard it because humans were in capable of changing their hearts of course. But only physically.

Metaphorically?

Black had a feeling that was what had happened to him, but that had all been due to Cyan who had showed him that their hearts were not that different when it came down to it. Black wasn’t sure how to even start explaining that to White.

He would not get it. He would do what he was going right now, calling Black weak and an alien-sympathiser and he was calling him out for going soft for the worst other species out there. 

Black took the verbal abuse, not letting it affect him, while he wrestled with White in space and tried to subtly keep an eye on the Skeld. The humans were smart, regardless of what White might be currently saying, but the ship wasn’t moving. Why weren’t they moving? They should put distance between them or White would try to come back the second he was done trying to tear Black apart.

Why aren’t you leaving, Black thought and something felt heavy and wrong in his core.

“Are you okay?” Purple asked, as they came running into MedBay. They sounded out of breath and looked worse for wear, even though Cyan just spared them one glance. “Why are you here? Bub told us you ran off to MedBay, are you hurt? Green is prepping the ship to fly but overriding the automatic destination is taking longer than expected.”

That was the opposite of what Cyan wanted right now. He patted the inside of his suit, sealing the tear and then slipping it back up his shoulder. He’s locked the helmet around his throat, so it was still keeping tight. It wasn’t as safe as having it attached to the rest of the space suit but it was the best solution right now.

“Don’t,” Cyan said, opening the common line. “Don’t fucking fly, Green.”

“You swore…” Purple muttered and looked a little shell shocked.

“Cyan,” Green said, voice already tight with worry, “you can’t go-”

“I can and I am,” Cyan said and slapped the adhesive over the outside tear on the suit too. He had completely ignored the flesh wound under the tear but a quick glance had told him it wasn’t fatal. It hurt like hell but adrenalin was helping keep the pain away. He jumped up from the bed he’d sat down on, and pointedly ignored the angulated corpse of Brown.

“Move,” Cyan said to Purple who was still in the doorway.

“What are you going to do?” they asked, and Cyan had seen them terrified multiple times on this trip. It was something he could identify easily, even just going by voice and body language.

“You know what I’m going to do,” Cyan said because it was as glaringly obvious as it was insane. “Now move. I will not tell you again.”

Green piped up in their ears. “Cyan, you can’t go out into-”

“I can and I am,” Cyan said and strode up to Purple. Despite his promise just a moment before he said it once more, deep and angry, “move.”

Purple moved. Bub was by the airlock, waving its little robot arms. It looked like it was trying to discourage him.

Cyan made sure to grab the rescue cable from the cabinet in the wall and then he stepped into the airlock. Purple grabbed the door before he could close it.

Cyan thought they would try to stop them again. It was probably a good thing that they were trying. This was absurd. He was doing something so utterly insane that he would have to be committed if this ever made it into his evaluation file.

Thing was, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to have one, at least not a usable one, after this anyway. MIRA HQ had spit more lies at them than realised and failed to warn their crew about a rising problem of murderous aliens infiltrating missions. Cyan didn’t give a flying fuck what they thought about his conduct right now.

As far as he was concerned, he was done with them the moment they stopped treating their employees like human beings and instead like they were disposable clogs in a machine.

“What do you need me to do?” Purple asked.

It surprised Cyan, but it also made a rush of relief flood through him.

“I need you to eject me into space,” Cyan said.

“Will you survive this?” Purple asked, and for once they sounded so much older than their age.

Cyan hated that this trip had done this to them, that Cyan was doing this to them now, but he wasn’t sure how to stop it or preserve Purple’s innocence after all that had happened.

“I don’t know, but I have to try,” Cyan said. “He… he saved me.”

“But… he’s a murderer, right? An alien?” Purple asked and he didn’t sound judgemental, just very confused.

It was a conversation that Cyan wanted to have. With Purple and Green but also with Black. For now, he would never be able to have it with the latter. Not if he didn’t do something.

Cyan knew that Black should probably be made to pay for his crimes somehow. He wasn’t sure how in the moment, other than he would never trust the human law enforcement to give him a fair trial. All of this was arbitrary anyway when he was floating further and further away in space with another of his kind that wanted to kill him.

“I am going to latch this safety line onto myself and put it on the panel inside of the airlock. After you eject me, go inside here and be ready to pull me back. It had a function for it, all you need is to press the button on the wall.”

Cyan attached the safety line to both himself and the designated hole in the wall where it became bolted shut.

“And if you get disconnected from the line?” Purple said, even as Cyan ignored it and shut the door to the airlock.

The time for talking was over. Black was running out of time. Cyan pointed at where he knew the eject button would be located. Green had gone quiet over the comms, probably figuring this was a losing battle or Cyan was about to cause his own demise.

Purple looked away but slammed their hand down on the button and Cyan felt like someone yanked his organs out when he was sucked out into the vastness of space.

Black was pretty sure one wasn’t supposed to be hallucinating after what must only have been minutes outside in space. Or maybe space was already messing with his reference for time.

No, it couldn’t have been that long. White was still trying, and failing, to catch him as they darted around each other. They were a species known for their stamina and determination to finish a task but one of them would have to be flagging in strength if this had been going on for ages. The coldness would have started to settle into their bodies for sure.

But Black was hard-pressed to otherwise explain just _how_ he could see a little cyan spacesuit coming towards them.

The sheer astonishment at that should-be hallucination caused White go properly get a hold of him for the first time since they had been expelled.

He was making claims of victory, gloating but then seemed to notice why Black had been distracted. White switched effortlessly into human language and it seemed to be an extensive taunt.

“Oh, I can’t believe it, little Cyan coming to rescue _you?_ Do you not see how stupid and weak they are?”

It was meant to rattle him for sure but it had the opposite effect. Maybe he had let the humans, and Cyan in particular mess with his head, but he saw kindness and strength in that action instead.

It was still objectively insane but the idea that Cyan had jumped out into space to save an enemy like him did something funny to his insides.

Black was suddenly not interested in fighting White off and instead tried to tear into him, tried to rip up his suit so that his body would be exposed and deteriorate quicker. White tried to do the same and Black was horrified to learn that they were really matched in strength here too.

“Not a peep or a spark of proper fight until your little _friend_ showed up? You are pathetic!” White screamed. “I am going to make you look as I devour his fucking face.”

Black growled and he found that the thread actually spurred him on more and he managed a very well-aimed gash across White’s front. Both of their hands were warped and changed to something closer to their real shapes, sharp claws extending and ruining their suits. Black felt it when his claws sink into White’s flesh.

It felt like betrayal and it made something unpleasant stir inside of him. It was like opening up for Cyan and all that emotional shit was leaving him vulnerable for other stuff too. Maybe Black would have heeded White’s advice not to let himself get involved after all.

They were twisting through space, locking in what appeared to be a vicious and cruel fight. Their boosters must be special or enhanced too because Cyan was advancing entirely too slow for his own liking. He felt like he couldn’t even tell if they were coming closer or not.

Space was around him, behind him, in front of him and above and beneath him. It was a terrifying thought if he let himself thing about it too little. The safety line on his belt felt slightly comforting but even so it was just a return back to a half-broken-down ship with only two humans left to run it and entirely too many dead bodies of their crewmates.

Suddenly, the black and white figures seemed to change direction and they were coming towards him. It had been the goal and it was probably good because he wasn’t sure how long the safety line reached but at the same time, he wanted to turn back and return.

His shoulder was killing him and it seemed entirely too cold compared to everywhere else. His breathing was laboured and he was so worried and confused.

It didn’t help when White and Black managed to actively crash into him entirely too fast. This close to each other, even out in the open space, it seemed like the comms were working.

“Little plaything has come out to play,” White shouted. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

“Leave him alone,” Black said and pulled back White as he tried to swipe for Cyan.

It caused them to roll and there were clicks and growls on the communication line now. Cyan had not considered how he was actually going to do this. He had come out without a weapon too. He was truly insane.

He felt it more keenly when the fighting imposters managed to go into his safety line, yanking him back for one terrifying moment but then for an even more terrifying one, he felt the line snap and disconnect him.

No.

He tried to fly to it, to grab hold of the line just floating in space, but something yanked on his foot and he screamed out of surprise and fear.

White was taking this too far. He was not allowed to have Cyan.

“You will leave him ALONE,” Black shouted, wrestling White’s grip off Cyan’s foot.

He couldn’t let this go on. Cyan had made him soft and made him afraid to strike for the kill it seemed but he couldn’t let himself be like that not now.

Black was surprised at the voice in the back of his head telling him that it probably was a kinder fate to take White’s life and spare him from a slow death in the vastness of space. Cyan would probably argue that there was a third option, because that was what he was like it seemed. Something like being brought back to the Skeld and detained.

Black knew he had a lot to learn but so did Cyan. Maybe they would get to teach each other. It was a comforting thought, even if it was an impossible one.

Seeing how White would definitely not hesitate to kill Cyan if he got a proper hold of him, Black moved to strike where he knew it would be deadly. There was a spot on their bodies where if driven through you would be done for. In their human imitated shapes, it was right at the base of the neck.

Black twisted around and made his move. Him and White might be matched in strength and Black had gotten distracted by Cyan’s arrival but so had White. He was much more focused on the human and he was forgetting about guarding himself. Maybe he thought that Black wouldn’t actually do it.

He would be wrong. Black had struck with deadly precision.

White got one word out before he went limb, and Black felt a wave of guilt.

Traitor.

Said in their shared language, their mother tongue, and it was such an ugly word. Black knew it was an appropriate one. He had betrayed the mission; he had betrayed his partner and he had betrayed their cause.

He wasn’t sure he was liking all of these feelings and deep thoughts about the rights and wrongs that Cyan had seemingly unlocked in him.

“Is… is he?” Cyan asked, voice shaken and worried, but Black was still glad to hear him speak at all. He wasn’t sure he’d ever hear that again.

“He’s dead.”

Cyan had seen him murder twice now. It was not a thing he liked; he had made that much clear. Black knew he was out of luck. He could never get what he had begun to imagine in his head. The conversations he had wanted to have with Cyan. Maybe even something as silly as being allowed to hold his hand. It was something he’d seen humans do on missions before and it looked… nice.

Cyan would never get used to seeing people, aliens, anything, die in front of him. He never wanted to see Black kill another living thing again.

He shivered and something was wrong. He felt cold. Tired. Exhausted.

“We need to find the safety line,” Cyan said.

Black didn’t move, he only kept looking right at Cyan. He looked a little like he was trying to memorise everything he could see. It was not something that Cyan liked to see.

When Black finally spoke up, it was just one single word and yet it was loaded with so much.

“We?”

Cyan wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wasn’t sure what Black had thought this was, if not a rescue mission. Maybe he didn’t want to make assumptions.

He might not understand what this was either. This odd bond, this tentative trust. Cyan surely didn’t know what to fully make of it either.

“Yes, we. Both of us. I came out to get you,” Cyan said all the same. He might not know what was happening here but he knew that he would much, much rather figure it out on the relative safety on the Skeld.

He believed that Black wouldn’t be a threat to himself or Purple and Green. He wasn’t sure past that but he was deciding to trust his gut on that at least. Black had told him that he didn’t want to kill him or the others.

Unless Cyan wanted him to, which was such an insane addition. As if Cyan would ever want to place a murder order on anyone, least of all his fellow crewmates. He hadn’t even wanted Brown to die.

He just wanted people to stop dying.

Inviting a known murderer back on the ship was probably not the best way to start this but he was in too deep to back out already and he didn’t want Black to die either.

“Okay,” Black said and he sounded as confused as Cyan felt.

“Come on, we need to catch that line,” Cyan said and he started up his boosters. They were an old edition, repair missions never warranting the newest gear. Black flew up on the side of him.

He clearly slowed down multiple times to keep their paces matched.

“Need help?” Black eventually asked, in a small voice like he was sure the answer would be no.

It wasn’t. Cyan felt seriously unwell and he needed to be back on the ship as soon as possible. He extended his hand and took Black’s without further hesitation. There were tears in Black’s gloves. Claws, Cyan had seen glimpses of them. They were gone now and thankfully; Black didn’t seem to be bothered much by the holes in his suits.

“Boost us, yeah?” Cyan asked and Black did.

Cyan held on tightly as they soared forward and Black effortlessly grabbed onto the safety line and wound it around his wrist a couple of times. Cyan kept a hold of Black’s hand and then pressed the button on his belt that had once been the end of the safety line.

It was a good thing it had a sensor so it worked even when broken.

A beat passed.

Cyan wondered if Purple and Green were going to leave them out here. It would be their decision, an even one that Cyan could understand. An engineer who seemed to have lost his mind and an imposter were probably not the best crewmates.

The line started drawing them in and Cyan held on tightly to Black.

There was something wrong with Cyan that much was clear. He seemed rash and frantic in a way that Black had never seen him act. He was the guy who kept a cool head and didn’t mess around too much. He was the one who talked other people out of making rash decisions.

Black couldn’t understand why he would do something as reckless as jumping out of the Skeld like this. To… save Black? It seemed that was the only explanation but Black didn’t know how to process any of that information and he was capable of evaluating things at least at thrice the speed of humans according to the information he had been given during his training.

Of course, now he wasn’t sure if that was legitimate either. What if all of their information on the human species had been lacking or outright wrong? He had never considered it before this one mission of one little human making him question everything with something as simple as kindness.

No, it wasn’t simple. Kindness was a human thing. It wasn’t something that Black had ever encountered anywhere else. He wasn’t sure that he understood the scope of it really.

He and Cyan reached the Skeld and the door clicked open for them and they stumbled into the airlock. Cyan had gone quiet and he was slumping and not standing properly on his feet. Black kept his hold of his hand and also moved to hold him around his waist.

Gentle and touching as little as possible while keeping him steady.

He had a distinct feeling that Cyan wouldn’t want his murderous hands anywhere near him. He would respect that. He would respect if Cyan wanted to toss him back out into outer space, even if he would be confused if that was the goal after he had gone through all the trouble of getting him back.

Black could take whatever punishment that Cyan would throw his way.

No, he wouldn’t he thought bitterly. If Cyan wanted him imprisoned by his human government? Black wouldn’t allow that. He might be willing to betray his own species to a degree but handing over himself was a step too far. He couldn’t do that.

As soon the airlock stabilized and the outer door had clicked in and locked, the inner door opened. Purple and Green both stood on the other side, both wielding handheld blasters that Black knew came from the locked cabinet in weapons.

“Step away from Cyan,” Green said in a commanding voice.

Humans were funny sometimes. Even on smaller repair missions like this when they didn’t have a set leader, Black had seen again and again how one of them had stepped up to take the position. It was usually easy to cause chaos to take that human out early on. Without leadership everything fell away. It was a testament to Green’s intelligence and use of her little robot that she had always been too hard to separate and kill easily.

“If I do, he’ll fall,” Black said honestly. He could feel Cyan’s breath even through the jumpsuit. “I think he needs to go to MedBay.”

“What did you do to him, you monster!” Purple screamed and tried to run forward, even raising his blaster. Green swiftly stepped in front and blocked him. It was a clever move. If Black had been intent to kill any of them, it was stupid to get this close.

But he didn’t want to kill them because it was clear that Cyan didn’t want him to commit any more murders. It was wrong to do, it seemed. That alone was still a weird thought.

“I didn’t do anything,” Black said, which was a weak defence but it was all that he had.

“I’m fine,” Cyan gridded out through clenched teeth. He tried to take a step forward and Black let him out of his grip.

Less than a second later, Cyan was tripping and nearly falling to his knees but Black reacted quickly and stepped forward to catch Cyan. He swore under his breath.

“What do we do?” Purple asked in a small voice that Black easily caught even if the question was clearly directed at Green.

Black wasn’t looking any of them. He was much more focused on Cyan.

“Are you really okay? What do you need?”

Cyan’s breathing sounded rough and slightly wrong. Black was pretty sure that Cyan wouldn’t reveal his vulnerable state to an enemy but he should have known better because Cyan had made a habit of surprising him already.

“My suit. My shoulder. It got hurt and I did a quick patch job,” he said. “I need it off.”

Green and Purple stopped their whispering back and forth and looked directly at Black and Cyan.

Green seemed to look both of them over, taking in a lot of information in just the one second that she looked their way. Then she turned to her little robot.

“Bub, go check that O2 is working correctly and report back. Stay by it, keep an eye at all time, do you hear?” she asked the little robot and it let out a chirp and then rolled away quickly. “Black, you’re going to help Cyan to MedBay but Purple and I will follow you the whole time and you will not make any wrong move. Are we clear?”

“We are,” Black said.

“You’re making too big a fuss of m-” Cyan tried to argue but he didn’t get any more arguing done before Black had scooped him up into his arms, mindful of the hurt shoulder. Green and Purple seemed equally surprised and they almost forgot to aim their blasters as Black strode out of the airlock with Cyan in his arms.

He wanted to take slow steps, to savour this moment because he wasn’t sure he would get any other chance to have Cyan in his arms like this. He had no clue what would happen any of the coming minutes.

It was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. Black’s whole life had been planned out for him from the moment he was a youngling. He had tested well in aptitude for these kinds of missions and that had been it. His whole life had been on this path automatically.

Being carried bridal style by an alien was never something that Cyan could have imagined happening but surprisingly his only complaint was the sharp pain in his shoulder. He should be terrified because he had seen what Black could do when he got his arms around someone.

He could crush flesh and bone. He had done so very recently and Cyan had watched it. How much time had passed? An hour? More? Less? Cyan had no clue at all. So much had happened that he was having trouble even processing it all.

Black was gentle in how he was holding him but fast. He didn’t seem any bit concerned with Green and Purple aiming weapons at him. Cyan wondered if weapons like that even would do any real damage to the alien. Black strode onwards like a man on a mission and the two crewmates were having a little trouble keeping up with his stride.

Cyan was confused by his own lack of fear. He could try to rationalise that it was because he had his crewmates backing him up with weapons but more than anything it was how his brain had just decided that it could take Black’s word that Cyan wouldn’t come to any harm at his hands.

Maybe it was because Black had been given multiple chances to hurt or kill him and instead, he had done the opposite. He had helped him, he had answered his questions, he had protected him. Despite his track history, and that did in fact give Cyan shivers, it wasn’t like Black had ever hurt him personally.

It was a confusing sensation.

“I’m going to put you down here,” Black said, quietly and sat Cyan down so gently as if he was made of glass. He wasn’t sure what to make of that either.

Black let go of Cyan properly for the first time since they had held each other’s hands while floating outside in space. Even when Cyan had, stupidly, tried to walk forward in the airlock despite the dizziness, Black had only removed the arm around his waist and not the hold of his hand.

It was the last thing to go now too and Cyan almost wanted to reach out and hold his hand again. Black didn’t give him an opportunity to do so, which was probably for the better. He stepped back and retreated to the corner of the room, back against the wall.

“Oh my god,” Purple said when they noticed Brown’s crumbled body. They dropped the blaster and turned away.

Black didn’t take the opportunity to strike. He remained motionless in the corner.

Green came up behind Purple and went to work. She ordered Purple to aim the blaster at Black and not look anywhere else. Then she managed to find a sheet and drape it over Brown’s body so that they didn’t have to see him. It wasn’t that there was much to see, all the injuries hidden by the suit but he was crumpled in a way that was entirely unnatural.

Cyan’s stomach turned and he had to once again recognise that he had gone out into space after a murderous alien. He wasn’t outright regretting it but he was definitely questioning how he could do something so rash. It wasn’t like him at all.

Once the body was covered, Green set to work on him, putting her blaster down on the nearby table.

“I’m okay,” he tried to argue.

“I took a couple of courses in medical assessment so let me decide that,” Green said, not listening to him at all and instead started to unzip the suit after she quickly checked in with her robot that oxygen levels were stable.

Cyan hadn’t taken his helmet off since he had arrived at the Skeld and it made him feel naked to do so now but he was necessary. He had enabled the emergency clutch where it latched onto the skin of his neck to ensure he wouldn’t be without air out in space. He could feel the dull pain now that it unclutched and he knew he was probably marked and bruised from it.

Green kept muttering under her breath as she pulled the suit back to reveal his shoulder. Scolding him but also saying that he had done a terrible job but been lucky. He zoned out a little and kept looking in Black’s direction.

He had gone still like before. He wasn’t moving at all. It was a little unnerving and comforting all in one. Cyan wasn’t sure how that could be a thing. It was unnerving because it made it so obvious that Black wasn’t human but at the same time, it seemed that he was standing still to try to make the others not perceive him as a threat. It was meant to be comforting, Cyan reckoned.

After Green had applied some kind of paste to the wound and another salve over his whole shoulder and dressed the wound, she stepped back and looked him over. He wanted the others out of their helmets too. He wanted to see a few friendly faces but he knew they would need to be on alert.

“You’re lucky,” Green said again. Third time probably. “You could have gotten yourself killed, but you’ll be fine. Bastard. Don’t ever do something like that again.”

Cyan chuckled and it hurt a little.

“I never thought I’d do it in the first place,” Cyan said and looked over at Black while he tried to figure out why he had done it. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for with that glance.

Answers, maybe?

It was a silly notion. Cyan wasn’t sure he had ever found the answers to anything just by looking at someone. Even so, he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

He didn’t find any of the answers in the opaque visor of Black’s helmet. He wanted to see his face too, even if it wasn’t entirely human.

“Now what?” Purple asked nervously, dropping their blaster once more. Cyan wanted to point it out, but calling attention to it seemed stupid. He would try to bring it up with Purple if they got a chance later.

Which brought them to Purple’s question.

Cyan let out a shaky breath.

“The two of you, Green and Purple, you’re going to make sure that we’re on a course that takes us away from… White’s body.”

“Is he dead?” Purple asked.

Cyan lifted his head to look directly at Black and he quirked up an eyebrow.

Black was for the lack of a better word… mesmerised. He had seen humans without their helmets before. Not often but he had seen it. Once he had torn off a helmet just seconds before the kill to get a look at how they actually looked under their protective gear.

He had been shown many models of them, training to camouflage as one of them to infiltrate ships but looking at Cyan’s face, Black was pretty sure that every single imposter would have been caught if they had to be regularly without their helmet.

There was so much going on. Miniscule tweaks of the facial muscles, something intense about the eyes and just an overwhelmingly foreignness compared to how Black knew himself and his species looked.

The hair over the eyes, the eyebrow, moved up. Black wasn’t sure what to make of that but Cyan was looking at him as if that meant something. Black had no idea what it meant. He hadn’t even been able to properly focus on the conversations, too lost in seeing how Cyan’s expressions changed and morphed as Green fixed up his wound.

Cyan was an idiot. He was hurt in a damaged suit and he had gone out into space. The skin around the cut looked a little frostbitten and Black was trying to recall if any of the human remedies could be combined to make the salve that they would make back home.

“Black?” Cyan asked.

He still spoke to him so gently. The same warm voice that he had always taken when speaking to Black or anyone else on board. Black had expected that to fall away. It should, right?

“Yes?” he answered all the same. He was willing to answer almost any of Cyan’s questions. Perhaps even them all. He had never felt like this before. This innate desire to get Cyan to like him was bizarre.

“Is White really dead? Like dead-dead, won’t come back, kind of thing?” Cyan asked.

The humans really had no clue how their species worked. It should be a good thing because it gave them an advantage that humans knew nothing of them and they knew _something_ about humans. Based on recent events he couldn’t say that they knew everything they needed to know about humans like he had been taught.

But Black found that he wanted to explain. Cyan seemed to like knowing how things fit together. Maybe if he knew how Black fit together, he would be less scared or angry.

“He is dead,” Black said. “Not coming back.”

“What is my life?” Purple muttered.

“Good, then no need to rush forward. But he should still get the ship away from these coordinates. HQ knows where we are and they might soon start to wonder why we haven’t come back yet. Do the navigation together and then check if there’s any repairs that are needed to keep it moving.”

Green’s posture was tense. Black could tell that she did not like Cyan’s words at all.

At least, she seemed to understand them. Black was at a loss. If both of them left, then he and Cyan would be alone together. Surely the crewmate could not want that.

“Cyan, you’re not thinking clearly, you should-”

“Perhaps not,” Cyan said and that was the first time Black had heard Cyan’s voice get a little hard and sharp. It was nothing like Red’s shouting, Blue’s yelling or Brown’s hollering but it was much more effective. “But I can take care of myself here. We’re all screwed if the Skeld stops working. And please check the damn oxygen, I trust Bub too but it’s just a highly intelligent robot.”

“We can’t leave you,” Purple argued and then seemed to remember their blaster once more and raise it again. Black really could have killed them a dozen times over.

“Okay,” Green said not putting up much of a fight.

Black wanted to speak up and tell them to absolutely not leave the two of them together. It seemed he didn’t need to because Purple did it for him.

“We can’t leave Cyan with a killing alien! I won’t!” Purple shouted, sounding more upset than angry.

“Purple,” Cyan called out, softly. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

“No, you’ll die.”

“I’m not going to die.”

“Yes, you will!”

Cyan let out a sight.

“Black, are you going to kill me?”

Black had been lost in just paying attention and he was never ready when Cyan turned and he could see those blue eyes staring right at him.

“No,” he answered honestly.

“He could lie! They’re capable of being liars, aren’t they?” Purple kept arguing.

It was Green that broke it up in the end, reminding them that if the ship failed then all of them were in immense trouble. She still had to practically drag Purple out of the room and she didn’t leave before she made Cyan promise to reach out if he needed.

Once the door shut behind them, Black was reminded of the last time they had been alone in this room. They hadn’t had any proper time to talk about it, because everything with White had happened. Now they had time. Black didn’t even know where to begin.

Should he be apologising? Probably but it felt weird. As far as he had been taught, he hadn’t done anything wrong with his sabotage and murdering. In fact, he would have been praised for that back home.

“You shouldn’t be alone with me,” Black said, staying perfectly still against his spot on the wall.

Cyan shifted on the bed a little, moving to the edge of it, so that his legs could swing. He looked weird without the bulky spacesuit. He had clothes on underneath but they were tight fitting and his upper half had been stripped down to just a piece of fabric covering his torso and leaving the arms without coverage.

It must be cold but Cyan didn’t seem to mind.

“Why? You said you wouldn’t kill me,” Cyan said and he sounded almost amused. It only lasted a second and then there was a deep sigh and that was definitely exhaustion. Upon closer inspection, Black could see that Cyan’s arms where sharking. They looked so skinny and yet he had proved that they were strong and capable when working on the ship.

“I am not, but this still seem like a bad idea. And if you planned to kill me, you should have let your friends stay,” Black said honestly.

Those blasters that they were carrying could do damage but only if fired repeatedly and in the right spot. Black was fairly certain that the humans didn’t know about where to aim them. 

Cyan let out a short laugh. It sounded just a little off.

“As if I could kill you, I’m not delusional,” Cyan said and then shook his head. “Besides, it would be stupid to attempt to kill you after I went through all of this trouble to get you back on board.”

Cyan kept swinging his legs, hands moving to hold onto the edge of the bed. His legs weren’t quite in sync, swaying just a little off beat from each other. There were so many tiny expressions happening in his face. How was anyone supposed to know what every single one meant? Or was it how they fit together? Black didn’t know. They had never been taught anything like this. It had been much more voice focused since human’s face were usually covered for this type of missions anyway.

Why did Black feel like there was a whole other language that humans could speak just by moving their face? It was unsettling but fascinating.

“Everything can be killed,” Black said, contemplating the validity of his statement. “If you know how to do it.”

“What a grim way to look at the world,” Cyan said, staring into the space in front of him. “We should look at all the places that life finds a way to overcome instead. Survive and persevere.”

“Why did you do it?” Black asked.

He had to ask. He had to know.

He had to try to understand why Cyan acted so out of character.

Black had been cataloguing and remembering Cyan’s actions.

This one was not one he would have ever predicted.

“Why did I do what?” Cyan asked, innocently but there was something in the way that his lips curved up that made Black feel like maybe he was teasing him. He wasn’t sure but it seemed like that. It was accompanied with a teasing tone at least, just a little bit.

“Jump out into space after me,” Black clarified.

Cyan shrugged and let out a prolonged hum. “It was the right thing to do.”

Even as he said it, he wondered if he was lying to himself or not. It had felt like the right thing to do in the sense that it had been his gut instinctive reaction. It usually meant that it was the right thing.

But then again, usually Cyan didn’t doubt his choice after the fact.

He had found that it usually didn’t do any good but it was too hard to push away the doubt this time. It was a much more serious choice than he usually would make.

“Or maybe it wasn’t,” Cyan added on. “I don’t know this time to be honest. I just… I didn’t know what to make of you. You’ve done terrible things here on board. And I’m guessing maybe even more terrible things that I don’t know about. But you also helped save us. I would be dead and so would Purple and Green if you hadn’t had a change of heart. It has to count for something. And I also just… I was curious.”

“Curious? About me?” Black asked.

“Yes,” Cyan said without a beat of hesitation. “Of course, I am.”

“What do you want to know?” Black asked and that wasn’t what at all the kind of response that Cyan had expected at all.

He had thought that Black would be guarded. Hostile and angry maybe. This was the opposite of how Cyan thought he would react. He sounded a little hesitant but open all the same.

“You’d tell me?” Cyan asked and looked over at Black standing so damn still. It made him want to tell Black to at least still pretend to be a living and breathing human instead of whatever he truly was. It would be wrong to make such a request, for both of them.

“I don’t see why not,” Black said and shrugged his shoulders. The movement was just a tiny bit stilted now that Cyan was watching it intensely and looking for tells. Even so, he’d never caught it before he had known Black’s true nature. How much human behaviour had they learned to mimic to infiltrate human vessels and kill of the crew?

Cyan turned around, and despite the pain shooting through his shoulder, he pulled his legs crossed under him and leaned forward. Terribly vulnerable to put himself in a position that was hard to get out of.

“Why are you here? What’s the objective?” Cyan asked, figuring he should start out easy but still test if Black would actually be willing to give him revealing answers. He didn’t owe it to Cyan, not even after the rescue. If anything, objectively it had just put them back to status quo from when Black had saved Cyan from dying at White’s hand.

Black seemed to hesitate and Cyan was preparing himself for disappointment, feeling silly that hope had started to flare in his despite telling himself that he shouldn’t get too excited.

But then Black spoke.

“We are sent out to prevent humans from spreading out further and colonising more of the planets. You are…” Black hesitated and lifted his head to look right at Cyan. “You are getting too close to our home planets and we do not want you there. We have seen the wake that you leave behind you. It will be war. A war that will claim casualties on both sides. My leaders are trying to avoid such a thing by delaying your expansion and making you stop sending out exploratory ships.”

“And on repair missions like this? Wait, you boarded with us back at MIRA HQ,” Cyan said and he felt dread spread through him. “How many of you are at headquarters?”

“More than you’d expect. And it’s… all kind of missions. We infiltrate crews just setting out, and we infiltrate out the ones sent after to help retrieve your vessels. The idea was that you’d eventually run out of either humans or vessels.”

Cyan wondered if Black’s home planet had a limited supply or if they were a smaller population. What remained of Earth and adding in the resounding bases and colonies, it would not be an issue of running out of manpower for a long time. Working for MIRA HQ was still considered a high honour.

“It won’t work,” Cyan said and reached up to pinch his brow only to feel the pain in his shoulder when he tried to move his arm. He let out a slight hiss.

“You should be resting,” Black said and it sounded concerned. Caring.

It didn’t sound like a ruthless alien sent out to murder humans. Cyan was having a hard time making his brain realised that Black could maybe be both of these. 

“I’ll rest when I’m dead,” Cyan joked.

“But… you almost did,” Black noted almost sounding confused. “I detect that you’re joking but it that not a little, what’s the word? Morbid?”

Cyan cracked a smile against his will. There was something endearing about Black speaking without reservations. He had been a man, well, an alien, of somewhat few words. Cyan wondered now if he’d kept relatively quiet because there were still facets of the human language that baffled him.

Frankly, it was impressive that Black was so fluent in it to begin with.

“It’s called a coping mechanism, using humour like that,” Cyan said. “It makes the cruelty of the world a little easier to deal with at times. But you’re right still. I could have died. I could still die.”

Cyan looked right at him with those intense eyes of his as he said that last part. Almost as if he was daring Black to do or say something. If Cyan had been one of his own kind, a remark like that would have had to be followed up by a battle of strength. Not to the death but enough to hurt.

Black moved from his spot striding up to Cyan sitting weirdly on the bed. Legs did not look like they were supposed to bend like that but he seemed comfortable enough in the position. He didn’t make a move to retreat as Black came closer.

So dumb and so trusting. Black would have to do nothing to kill him so easily. It had been excusable before when Cyan hadn’t known the danger but he knew it now. He had seen it in action multiple times.

Black stopped right in front of the bed, Cyan had to tilt his head back a little to look up at Black’s face.

“I will answer almost any question you ask of me, Cyan. And if you deem that my actions towards your kind to be punishable, then I will bear that punishment as well. Except if it revolves around taking me back to your leaders. I cannot allow that, if my body were to fall into the hands of your scientists, it would-”

“Black,” Cyan said and there were hands on Black’s arm.

Warm and steady hands. Cyan was reaching out and holding onto him. He was touching him again. Black immediately cut himself off. He expected Cyan to retreat his hands but if anything, they clutched onto the fabric tighter.

“I am not leaving you in the hands of scientists. I am not delusional as to what would happen to you there,” Cyan said and he shivered.

Black wondered what kind of things he was thinking of to get such a disgusted look on his face. Cyan was odd. He had so much love for his fellow humans, he insisted looking at the world and searching out the light places but he was still keenly aware of the darkness lurking. Was he so determined to seek out the light because he had seen the dark depth?

Black had never seen anything of either extreme side. He had only known orders and routine. You did as you were told and everyone lived like that. You were not meant to ponder or question your existence.

“You should hate me,” Black said.

“Perhaps,” Cyan said and he finally let go of Black’s arm. Black had felt uncomfortably stuck with the touch but he still wanted it back as soon as Cyan had let go. “But I can’t. Hatred makes me the kind of person that I don’t want to be.”

Cyan looked up again, and his eyes looked odd now. Wet. Crying, Black realised. Cyan was crying. Something humans did when they were sad or stressed.

“But you’re right that you should pay for your crimes. If you were a human crewmate, we’d take you back and make you stand trial. You’d be convicted years and years in jail or perhaps even death. I don’t know if that would have been the right choice either. I like to believe that we can change, even if there are also unforgivable acts one can commit. I don’t know that we could ever walk away from them.”

“I do not understand,” Black said.

Cyan was using words that Black technically knew but it was getting hard to keep track of them. It was frankly liberating to be able to say this out loud instead of just keeping his pondering at the nuances of humans to himself and just act along like he got it all.

Cyan let out a snort. It was a nice sound. It meant that Cyan was amused.

“I’m not sure I understand myself either. I’m just saying… it’s difficult and different with you. It sounded like you were trained for these kinds of missions, yes?”

“Since I was young, yes.”

How young Cyan wanted to ask, but it would matter little. They probably didn’t have the same type of life spans or maturity rates. Those were all questions that Cyan also wanted to ask, but not now. Later, if he got the chance.

He had a feeling that he might get the chance. Black was different now. More confused but also gentle. There was something about him that made Cyan believe that he didn’t _have_ to be a ruthless killing machine. He had always believed more in rehabilitation anyway.

The image of Black as one of those horror stories of children soldiers with guns made something chilly run down Cyan’s back.

“Why have you changed your mind?” Cyan asked and he felt like he had asked this before but he needed concrete answers. It wasn’t just his life on the line anymore. It was Purple and Green’s too. He owed it to them to make sure that he wasn’t actually considering letting a murdering alien stay on board if he was still an active threat.

“Clarify,” Black said.

Cyan took a moment to consider. “Why stop with the murders? Or is this… like a contemplation period or a lapse in judgement?” Cyan asked and he could sense that Black was still not really understanding what he was asking. “I want to know why just because, but that part is mostly for my own curiosity. Most importantly because I want to know whether you’ll be a danger to us, this crew, but also other human crews in the future.”

“Is that how you evaluate punishment?”

Cyan shifted a bit in his seat, pulling a knee up against his chest. Black was still so damn close but he wasn’t intimidating. There was a sense of danger, something deep deep, down warning Cyan to be cautious and alert. He didn’t ignore it outright but he managed his own reaction to it. Deep instincts were valuable but they weren’t the end-all-be-all.

“One of the ways. It’s interesting information to know. If someone does something terrible they should be punished for it, but perhaps less if they regret their decision and vow not to make it again as opposed to someone who would repeat the action in the future.”

“But how can you know if they’d do it again? Do humans take vows that seriously?” Black asked.

Cyan should not be finding himself endeared but it was so damn hard not to do so. His defences were down, he was mentally and physically exhausted and not much made sense anymore. He had wanted to talk to Black but he was still not sure that anything was making sense in this state.

Black seemed so curious and almost sweet. An alien with a great duality for sure.

“We do not,” Cyan said. “Humans break vows quite often. We wouldn’t know if someone was just really good at deceit. It would be possible. But… it might work the first time, but I don’t think we’d be fooled again. We have a very old saying, _fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me_.”

“Which means?” Black asked.

Cyan was trying not to smile but he was smiling damnit. He straightened up and tried to stretch out and get on his feet. He needed to damn sleep. Maybe they could lock Black back in the airlock or something.

No, he hated that idea as soon as it entered his brain. Purple wouldn’t have the guts to expel the alien but Green might. It would be the tactical correct choice. Black was too much of a loose cannon.

“I’ll tell you, walk me to the shuttle? I need rest.”

Black seemed to freeze at that.

“You should rest here. With the light and medical equipment and… if you’re gone from here the other crewmates will have thought that I have killed you.”

Did Black almost sound… worried?

“Just walk with me,” Cyan said determinedly and forced his legs forward. He didn’t want to sleep in MedBay. He had never been good around hospitals and MedBay’s sterile surfaces and that smell was bringing back bad memories.

“Okay,” Black caved quite easily.

Cyan’s steps were slightly wobbly but he managed to move forward. Black stuck somewhat close by but he didn’t get close enough to touch, but Cyan notice every time he was a little more unsure on his feet, Black moved just a tiny bit as if getting ready to catch him if he fell.

“The saying means that one shouldn’t let themselves be fooled twice by the same person. You’ll be shamed if you give a second chance to be good to someone who abuses it.”

“We would not even give second chances,” Black said, voice so quiet that Cyan almost couldn’t hear it from the hum of energy running through the walls of the Skeld.

“We believe a lot in second chances.”

“But it… gets taken advantage of, doesn’t it? You said that you can’t know when someone is deceiving you. How can you grant them another chance then? It makes no sense. I should be shame on you for giving them another chance.”

Cyan stopped in his steps and turned to look right into Black’s visor. He was closer than he’d usually be and he could swear that he could make out a face behind it, human-like but not entirely. It was vague just an outline but Cyan still felt like he was seeing Black’s face a bit more.

“No, it shouldn’t. Frankly, I always thought the saying was stupid. The shame should fall on the perpetrator again. How dare they take advantage of the good-hearted? You shouldn’t be shamed for believing in someone. It doesn’t do well to be naïve but seeing the best in people isn’t a crime.”

“I am not surprised to hear that you feel like that,” Black said and he wanted to move away. Cyan had just stopped in the middle of the hallway and he was glaring at Black like he could see right through him.

Maybe he could.

“What do you mean?” Cyan asked and a tension took over his shoulders. He was exhibiting defensive body language; Black had fucked up again.

“I just mean… that’s you, isn’t it? The… second chances, the good-heartedness,” Black explained and there was so much happening on Cyan’s face that Black wasn’t sure how to make any of it make sense. It made him want to explain more, to try to put his thoughts into words, even if he was normally fond of thinking things through first and only then speaking. “I just mean… you lend me spacesickness pills because you thought I was feeling unwell. You help out the other crewmates in so many ways. You’re fair and just but somehow without being cruel. You do trust far, far too easily but that’s perhaps your only flaw. You have this warmth about you that everyone around you seem to pick up, I’m not even sure if you realised yourself. On my other missions, there have also been humans that I could tell were well-liked but it was something else with you. The others paid attention and listened to you, without any real protest. It was mesmerising to watch. You could have convinced them _all_ to play to your whims but instead you didn’t. You’ve got a gift of persuasion and you don’t _abuse_ it. I have never seen anything quite like it. You have this kind of _glow_ and I find myself just wanting to talk to you. That’s never happened before either. I’ve never wanted to figure a human out like that before. Most of you didn’t interest me at all but you… There was something. I don’t know what but it was enough for me to start questioning everything. One - what is it you call it? – act of kindness? It confused me and you interest me.”

Black felt like he was going to need to sit down soon or something. He wasn’t sure he had ever in his whole existence said that many words in a row. He felt a little shocked. Cyan seemed shocked too.

“I… I don’t know what to say to that,” Cyan said and his voice was different now. Softer and smaller. How crewmates would lower their voices to whisper privately among each other. “But I suppose I have a question for you?”

“Go ahead,” Black said, looking down at the floor now. It was too much to look at Cyan’s face. It was too open and expressive, even if Black had trouble figuring out the expressions.

“Look at me, please,” Cyan asked, tone close to begging.

Black raised his head immediately despite his own discomfort.

“Okay,” he said.

“Did you… are you… it almost sounds like you like me?”

“Like you?” Black asked. “Yes, of course, I do. Why else would I want to talk to you? Communication should always serve a purpose. I wanted to learn more about you because what I already knew made me interested for more.”

“Oh,” Cyan said and suddenly his cheeks looked a little flushed. It was a nice change from the pale complexion he’d had. He was only worried that it was a bad sign.

“Are you okay?” Black asked.

“I’m fine, it’s just… I don’t know how to process that. That you like me. You didn’t kill me because you _liked me_ ,” Cyan said and he sounded like he couldn’t believe the words that he was saying.

It was odd. It was a fairly simple concept wasn’t it? Black had thought so. Liking someone was not exactly the most encouraged thing on his home planet but it happened sometimes. It was usually frowned upon because it could distract from their missions.

Humans did it a lot though, Black had easily noticed. It was something they had been taught to see because it gave them an advantage. If you were well-liked, then it was that much easier to manipulate humans.

He had been fairly sure that Cyan liked him but now he was starting to doubt that assumption. Maybe he had gotten it wrong, since Cyan was unsarcastically kind to everyone.

“Do you not like me?” Black asked.

Cyan’s face did too many things at once again. Black wanted to ask him to explain it all but he wasn’t sure that humans were even capable of putting into words what was happening on their faces. Black wanted to spend hours and hours talking to Cyan, figuring out every little twitch and movement. He liked when Cyan looked bright, even if he was flashing his teeth. It didn’t seem like a warning or gearing up to a fight. It seemed soft and warm.

“I… it’s… you can’t… you can’t ask someone something like that!” Cyan said and he sounded upset now. His eyes looked wild and unfocused. It was enrapturing but Black wanted to cower. He had messed up yet again. Cyan started walking, still towards the shuttle and the temporary beds, but he kept talking. “It’s not a fair question to ask of me, not when I know you are a murderer. When you’ve taken the life of my crewmates. Do you know the kind of moral dilemma that puts me in? If I was as kind and as virtuous as you seem to think me, then I should have left you in space to rot!”

Angry Cyan moved _fast_ Black found out quickly, he made sure to keep up, ready to support him if he should stumble again. It didn’t seem to be a real option though, not with how steadily he was suddenly moving even if he was wincing. He seemed more focused on his words than his steps.

“It’s a vile act, one I said I’d never ever condone and I don’t but it’s something else to be faced with a choice like this. It’s so fucking easy to be high and mighty until you’re down in the dirt and faced with it all first-hand. Things changes then. I still don’t understand everything that’s going on with you. But the things I do know mollifies me a bit. This is what you’ve been taught to do from a young age, it’s how you’ve been raised, it’s all you’ve known, right?”

It took Black a moment to realise that he was asking him something.

“Right,” he said, quietly.

Cyan did still seem angry, so fuming angry that it was very unlike him again, but it wasn’t really directly aimed at Black it seemed. He was thankful for that.

“And you spared my life, and then you save it and that of two of my crewmates. You chose our safety over your own kind, you helped keep us safe in the face of what must have been an impossible choice as well. All of this adds up, whether I want it to or not. And then there’s the fact that I was already endeared by you before I stared to suspect your real nature. It’s just all one big mess in my head,” Cyan finished and then came to a stop outside of the shuttle.

He leaned against the wall and his chest was heaving with effort. Effort of the walk or the rapid rush of words, Black didn’t know.

Cyan reached up to pinch between his eyebrows, it looked uncomfortable.

“I’m going to go sleep,” Cyan said, “with any luck, I’ll just pass out from exhaustion. You go back to MedBay. Stay there so you don’t scare Green and Purple.”

“Okay,” Black agreed even if he would rather stay here and watch over Cyan. He was fairly sure that Purple and Green or even the little robot would pose a threat but Cyan’s body looked like it was unstable and could hurt himself.

Still, Black wasn’t dumb enough to assume that Cyan would allow him close in his sleep like this. And if he did, then Cyan was the foolish one. Not stupid though, he was fair too smart to ever be called that in earnest.

“If I wake up to any of them dead or hurt, I’ll find some way to hurt you,” Cyan said. “Don’t abuse the trust I’m putting in you. Don’t make either you or me a fool, okay?”

Black nodded.

Cyan looked him over once more, almost as if he would be able to see his intention just upon laying his piercing gaze on Black. Black was pretty sure that humans couldn’t do that.

Cyan nodded, stiffly and then pressed open the door to walk into the shuttle. He was half-way through the door when he paused and looked back over his shoulder.

Black waited.

Something was happening with Cyan’s eyes and Black was scared what that expression meant.

“You deserve an answer to your question, Black,” Cyan said and he sounded weird, but not necessarily a bad kind, “and despite any reason or caution, yes, I do still like you. Goodnight. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

The door slid close and it took Black a full minute before he got his feet to move again. Cyan liked him. Still.

It seemed that Cyan was not the only one who had things to process.

Cyan woke up which was honestly not something he had been sure would happen when he had gone to sleep. Sure, he had closed the door on Black but he was not foolish enough to think that Black wouldn’t be able to get in here.

He was more worried about his two remaining crewmates if he was honest. It seemed that Black had formed an attachment to him.

Maybe that thought should terrify him. Scare him a little at least. Black had proved more than capable to overpower and kill. It should be scary to think about but it didn’t feel like that. Cyan was cautious, because he was always cautious but more than that he just wanted to talk to Black. To know more about him. The more they had talked the more Cyan had been able to understand where the alien was coming from.

He tried not to think about how _he_ was starting to form an attachment too.

Cyan turned over in his spot and he nearly had a heart attack at someone watching him from the shadows. The dim lightning was making him think it was Black for a second. And he didn’t even think before he opened his mouth.

He was really becoming entirely too looselipped around the alien.

“It’s creepy to spy on sleeping people, you shouldn’t do that,” Cyan said and rubbed his eyes. It was a luxury now that he could be out of the space suit while the O2 was still working. “Did you stay here the whole night? Did you leave Green and Purple alone?”

“You are in too deep already,” a voice that was decidedly not Black replied.

Cyan pulled his hands away from his eyes and Green leaned forward a little.

Cyan scrunched up his nose and wondered why humans hadn’t evolved to have spontaneous teleportation abilities. It would come in pretty handy right about now. He exhaled a deep sigh.

“I know.”

“Purple is safe. I left them and Bub in O2. Your alien hasn’t moved from MedBay all night. I have been on cams keeping an eye out,” Green said in that level-headed voice of hers.

It was almost jarring to be met with the tone of someone who hadn’t lost their shit yesterday. Cyan felt like he was still trying to come to terms with it all. Entirely too much had happened. He was one little human, he was not meant to process several murders, a muder attempt on his own life, well a couple he supposed, reveal of an alien and diving out into space to retrieve said alien despite his darkened past.

Thinking about it, Cyan kind of just wanted to go back to sleep again.

It wouldn’t do though. He forced himself to get up, shoulder aching horribly but it didn’t feel life-threatening. He would be fine. He made it into a sitting position and then had to pause to breathe.

“We’re going to need a game plan,” he said, looking over at Green. He kind of wanted to let her lead them. She had done well as the de facto leader of the crew. Cyan was fairly sure she’d bristle at him if he said that so he held his tongue but he still believed it.

No one should have been put in this situation but at least they had never condemned any innocent crewmate to freeze or starve to death in the vastness of space and they had managed to expel an imposter.

Well, two until Cyan had gotten one of them back. He wondered if she was mad. She sounded stern but not exactly mad but then again, he could never recall having seen her be mad.

“We are going to need more than that. We’re going to need to know where we stand with your alien first.”

“He’s not _my_ alien,” Cyan protested but it was weak. She’d said it once already, hadn’t she? He had just let it slide then but he frankly didn’t want to be reminded that he was a big part of the reason that they were in this bind now.

If he had just left Black out in space with White, and they had managed to escape with the Skeld far enough that they couldn’t be follow? They could be on their route back home now.

To safety?

Cyan wasn’t so sure about that anymore to be honest, which might be why he was hesitating.

“Don’t look so tormented,” Green said. “You did what you thought right. So far, there had been no negative blowout from it. He is the most docile murderous alien I have ever met.”

“You’ve met others?” Cyan joked.

“I have,” Green said, voice completely serious.

“Oh,” Cyan said, “I didn’t know you’d… wow, really?”

“Only a couple and none quite like Black, I must admit. But there are movements, coalitions, meant to find peace between us all now that we have to share the universe like this. It’s a possibility moving forward,” Green said and Cyan shot her a confused look. “We cannot go back, at least not with Black. You and I both know that we can’t take an alien back with us. What they would do to him?”

Green shivered. Cyan was at least glad that they were on the same page about that.

“So, you believe he could be redeemed too? Or am I truly in too deep?”

“Mate,” Green said and moved over to kneel beside him and gently place a hand on his shoulder. “You are _definitely_ in too deep. And as for redemption? Who knows? We need to figure out how he will redeem for the murders, if we should decide to stick together. It is not something to be handled lightly, but the idea that anyone is rotten beyond repair before they have been given a chance to at least try to redeem themselves? It’s a vile one. I have a couple of contacts in the alien-human coalitions, I could try to reach out to them, if we want to go that direction.”

“I can’t ask you and Purple to give up your careers and your ties to Earth. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

Green squeezed Cyan’s shoulder once more.

“Would it be fair to you?” she asked, and there was something in her voice that Cyan couldn’t pinpoint. Compassion perhaps, but it felt lazed with cynicism.

“I… I don’t know. Maybe not, but at least I could live with that. I’m not that close to my family, not anymore and it’s not like I will ever be able to trust any mission that MIRA wants to send me on after this. And isn’t headquarters likely also infiltrated by imposters? It seems unwise to go back.”

“Going back would not be an option now, as you know as well. As for myself and Purple, I cannot speak for them obviously but I do know they are disowned from their family, and I have ties to people all over the universe. I ever much liked restricting my social circle to our home planet.”

“Even aliens?” Cyan asked, baffled and awed at the same time. “Like you said you met them but befriended them?”

“Yeah, in particular aliens,” Green said in a voice what sounded like they were smiling. Cyan couldn’t tell not with her face still behind the opaque visor. As if reading his mind, Green reached up to both sides of her helmet and pressed the two buttons that pulled the visor back.

Cyan’s first thought was that she had kind eyes.

“Talk to Black, figure out what he wants too, and then you, Purple and I will have to decide too. I’ll go talk to Purple now, see where their head is at? It should be a mutual decision, I believe but for now, an established human-alien coalition is our best bet. It’s the kind of things we were warned off if you poked around too much at MIRA, but for all of the wrong reasons. It is the future, even if they deny it, and trying to find harmony and solidarity is the only way forward in the end.”

Cyan was ready to tell Green to just make _all_ of the decisions. She seemed smart and capable and he still felt like he was tied together with a thin thread that might snap any moment. Green left him to wake up, and Cyan took a little too long to just sit.

Stew in his emotions.

Assess his brain’s mess.

Make a final decision.

They couldn’t go back. Clearly, Green thought going forward, this human-alien coalition thing might be the best option. If Black or Purple didn’t put their feet down? Then this might be it.

Black picked up on the fact that someone lingered outside of the closed door into MedBay. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. He counted slowly, having fun trying to count out the human’s silly way of counting time, making sure to have each individual moment be able to be measured and calculated.

Black wasn’t raised with something like that but it was something he had met in training often enough. He had thought humans obsessed with it, and thought it so silly. Humans had so much time as opposed to other species he knew of.

It was before the first minute ran out that he had figured out that it was Cyan on the other side of the door. It could have been Purple too, who seemed curious and terrified of even coming near him.

Green had sent in her little robot a few hours ago, informing him that Cyan was still resting but she would talk to him when she woke and then she would send him Black’s way. She had also asked if he needed any food to be brought in.

Her voice sounded funny coming through the tiny robot. A simple piece of technology but a curious one all the same. Why was it made to be nearly humanoid? Given eyes and hands like themselves? Why had Cyan acted like it was a human child when he had spoken to it? Why was Green so protective of it when it was not a living thing?

Black felt like he had many things to learn.

But he also knew many things, like how to tell someone apart.

“I know it’s you outside the door, Cyan,” Black said at just a normal volume, wondering if the sound would even carry through the door.

A part of him wanted to jump into the vent and then run up from cams and then come surprise Cyan. Not to hurt him, _of course not,_ but simply to startle him. It was a new thing, because what was that? Playing? Joking around? Black had seen it in humans before but he had never understood it. It had seemed pointless.

Now he wanted to engage in it.

The door swung open and there was Cyan. He seemed to have found a replacement suit, a grey one that was too dull for such a bright person, but he was still without his helmet. It was over near the bed where Cyan had placed it last night. Black could still see the marks around Cyan’s neck.

Black wanted to ask for his name. His real name instead of the colour but he was not sure he deserved it. He wanted to give his own name too, even if he was sure Cyan would have trouble pronouncing it.

Something told him that now was not the time but maybe, just maybe, they could do that. If all was not lost, if Cyan didn’t deem Black’s actions worthy of paying with his own life or separating from the humans entirely.

Cyan would not do the first, Black already knew, the human was far too kind. But the thought of the three humans dropping him on a planet somewhere and never being allowed near them again also sounded absurd. It made something hurt, like a physical pain shooting through Black’s whole body.

Cyan still hadn’t said anything, he was just lingering in the doorway and looking. Then, with a heavy sigh, he walked into the room and moved to sit on one of the beds. He waved his hand in Black’s direction and then at the bed opposite where he had sat down. Black caught on quickly, but he moved slowly, not wanting to scare Cyan or make him uncomfortable.

Cyan’s hands reached for his cyan helmet and he put it in his lap and wrapped his arms around it. A comfort gesture? Perhaps. Black wanted to tell Cyan that he was sorry that the human felt he needed comfort right now, sitting opposite him, and that Black himself somehow couldn’t provide it.

What a ludicrous thought, why would Cyan want comfort from him?

“I talked to Green,” Cyan started, fingers drumming on top of the helmet. It was quite a rhythmic melody.

“I know,” Black said. “She said she’d speak to you when you woke up.”

“What else did she tell you?” Cyan asked and perked up a little. He looked hopeful. 

“Not much, asked if I needed food,” Black said.

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Need food, like we do?” Cyan asked and some of the tension seemed to melt away.

“Not exactly like you do. Our resources are scarcer so we have evolved to need less sustenance but yes, we do still require it. Just not necessarily every day.”

“Fascinating,” Cyan said and got this far away look in his eyes. It only lasted a second before he shook his head and refocused on Black.

So maybe Black could understand wanting to count every second if you could have someone like Cyan look at you. Every single second seemed like something special, he had to admit.

It was nice being able to see his eyes. He had never really understood why the other humans had complained about the lack of eye contact because of their spacesuits but he had been catching on ever since Cyan had taken his helmet off.

“I am glad you seem more rested now, you clearly needed it,” Black said and he tried to make his voice come out softer at the end, knowing it could be taken as negative but hoping that Cyan wouldn’t do that. It surely wasn’t meant like that.

“Yeah, I feel better,” Cyan said and touched his temple with his right hand. “I’m still a little groggy and just tired. Don’t let anyone tell you that a good night’s sleep fixes everything but it does help. Even if just a little. I’ve talked about Green what we need to do moving forward. Have you ever heard of human-alien coalitions? Species working together to manage this time of expansion and such?”

It was almost adorable how unsurely Cyan explained it.

“I have heard of the UFO, United Federations Organisation, which has existed for a long time. A small group of species coming together to work at including everyone and trying to stop wars before they start. Humans are a new addition to it, since you only relatively recently learned how to get past our own native solar system. You have impressed everyone with your speed though,” Black said.

“Wait, it’s called UFO?”

“Yes,” Black said and he was confused when Cyan started smiling, and even chuckling. Black was left baffled but delighted. “Did I say something funny?”

Cyan waved his hand and this whole thing felt like a fresh breeze that was blowing away the last bit of tension and awkwardness clinging to them.

“No, no, it’s nothing. Just some silly human humour. Anything related to alien and being spotted in our atmosphere used to be referred to as a UFO.”

“I see,” Black said, even if he still didn’t understand. It didn’t matter, because Cyan was smiling and that was enough. He could always ask him later, if they got a later. That stab of pain went through him again. Yearning? Was that what humans would call it? “My species were not fond of UFO, but I did hear rumours of some recruits leaving to join the coalition. I… I never understood it. I thought they were stupid, trying to negotiate when there is so much mess and so many different interests. It would have to all be… what do you guys call it? Compromises? Our leaders didn’t like the idea of having to give _anything_ up.”

“And you?” Cyan asked and looked right at him, like he was seeing through him, even if Black still hid behind the helmet. “What do you think now?”

Black took a moment to answer and he tried not let his gaze rest too much on Cyan.

“I understand it. The willingness to share with others different from you. The desire to know more about the species that you share the universe with. The wish to create a universe with less loss of life. You…” Black started but then hesitated, wondering if this was revealing too much vulnerability. Maybe it was, but Cyan’s eyes were warm and welcoming and Black could tell that he was listening. “I’m not sure you even realised but err… a couple of days ago with those rituals you did in electrical for Yellow and Pink? It made me realise that _you_ value, even humans you didn’t really know as something important and valuable and it was so different from anything I have _ever_ been taught. We kill our own if they step too far out of line. Everyone is disposable, our own and most certainly outsiders. But… you. You didn’t see it like that. I didn’t even understand at the time, but I wanted to be like you. I was supposed to kill you then, you know, White and I had agreed but I just couldn’t… I couldn’t do it, which made me a failure to my people, but it didn’t feel like that. I just wanted _more_ , I wanted to continue talking to you, to learn from you, to… something. I don’t even know. Just, I like how you see the world so much more than the way I have always been taught to view it. And I am sorry, for killing Yellow and Brown, and all the other human lives I have taken, I didn’t _know_. I never understood.”

Black felt like he was falling apart at the seams and he did something he had been told that he was never allowed to so on a mission. He unclasped his helmet and removed it. It was a dead-giveaway of his true identity. His species were mimics but not to perfection, not when he was still so relatively young. He was human-like right now but his teeth were a little sharper, his skin a little rougher and his eyes a lot darker than any human’s eyes could ever be. It felt like another act of rebellion to remove it, to let Cyan see but Black already knew that he would gladly take his chance with Cyan over anyone else.

“Black,” Cyan said and Black hadn’t realised that he had lowered his gaze but when he lifted his head, he could see that Cyan was crying. Liquid was leaking from his eyes and there were so many distressed emotional signals from him but also something good and warm. Heartly.

Black had never felt something like that before.

Cyan was not recoiling in fear or disgust. He was getting up and moving closer. Black wondered if he should lean back, if this was an attack of some sort but that was all he managed to wonder before there were arms wrapped around him.

Cyan was not strong compared to Black, but there was an undeniable strength in the way he held around Black. Black closed his mouth, suddenly afraid that he could somehow hurt Cyan on accident, even if his teeth were more than manageable in this form. He let his body untense, shut down the alarms that was telling him that there was an enemy on him, actively restraining him, because that was not what was happening.

Black knew what this was. He had just never ever expected to get one.

A hug.

Cyan wondered if he had gone too far. Maybe they should have talked about personal boundaries. Maybe Black’s species didn’t even do touch. It was another reckless impulse that he had just given into. It could have gotten him killed, objectively speaking, because Black could probably have killed or severely hurt him on accident.

But there was something that had told Cyan that he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, so frankly he was more worried about making Black uncomfortable. Cyan wasn’t sure when his life had come to this.

He wondered if he should pull back, so he started to loosen his tight hold when he felt Black arms coming up around him. Cyan hugged him close once more. Black’s arms were so slow and careful, coming around Cyan as if they might break him.

Cyan wanted to tell him that he didn’t break that easily but he didn’t know the extent of Black’s strength and a remark like that would have tempted fate.

He wasn’t regretting the hug though and eventually Black’s arms came around him and gave him the gentlest squeeze back. Mimicking him perhaps but not trusting himself not to hurt Cyan’s body.

He was falling for this damn alien. After hearing the growing despair in Black’s voice, about how he had been taught such horrible things and only learned by observing Cyan that life was meant to be protected no matter whose? It had broken something inside of Cyan. They would still have to find a way for Black to atone but it was clear that he wanted to change so badly.

When Black had taken his helmet off, it was like the air had been punched out of Cyan’s lungs. He looked human, kind of. Sharper teeth and a slightly different complexion but what caught Cyan’s attention the most was Black’s eyes. They were so dark, darker than anything Cyan had ever seen but they also looked like they had tiny stars in them.

Cyan had spent his whole childhood staring up at the stars and wanting to be among them. Now he was finding stars inside of Black’s eyes and he knew he was doomed. Truly fallen in too deep to ever get out.

“You have to promise me one thing,” Cyan said as the hug lingered on. Black seemed to loosen his hold a little, probably assuming Cyan wanted them to separate now, but Cyan didn’t. He held on tighter. “You can’t go around murdering people, humans, other species, anything. If you want to see the world like I do, then you cannot go around murdering.”

Black was quiet for a moment but Cyan did not pull back.

“Okay, I promise, except for if you or anyone you care about are in danger. If I cannot save you while keeping the assailant alive, then I will use deadly force.”

Cyan pulled back from the hug now, but he did so gently and looked into Black’s eyes.

He didn’t have much of a stipulation with that ramification. Self-defence was a last resource at times, even if he wholeheartedly believed that most situations could be deescalated to not need death. He could teach Black the finger points.

“Okay. I can live with that, but you are included in that too, remember? Because, you’re allowed to defend yourself, just never turning to ending someone’s life unless it is the _very last_ resort.”

“Only because of that?” Black asked and there was something hopeful in his tone. Teasing almost too.

“Well….” Cyan said and he had a feeling he might be managing to bring on a blush despite still being tired and wrung out. “You are one of the ones I care about too, alright? It’s still a mess in my head, but you are. I think, I like you. Too, I mean. I just… we have to go slow, figure all of this out? Speaking of, how do you feel about UFO, going to see them and potentially joining up?”

“If you are there, I will go,” Black said, and he sounded serious.

Cyan had so many arguments about co-dependency on the tip of his tongue and how it wasn’t healthy for anyone to create their life around someone else. He would sit Black down and explain it properly, but maybe tomorrow. It would likely take them some time to find UFO anyway. For now, he hoped he could give him the cliffsnotes version.

“I’m very flattered, Black, but you have to do this for you too. I can’t be all about me, it has to be about what you want too.”

“And if I want you?” Black asked and he somehow managed to look like a confused puppy. It was entirely too endearing.

Cyan was sure he was blushing now. Properly and probably increasing in colour.

“Yeah, that’s… yes. We’ll figure out what that means for the both of us. But one main thing about being human is owning up to your mistakes and trying to get better with each passing day, so you’re a little bit better of a person. It’s about making the good choices when you can, and trying to forgive yourself and learn when you make bad ones.”

“Sounds compilated.”

“It is,” Cyan said, not laying any fingers in between. “Still, do you want it?”

Black nodded. “Yes, I want you but I also want to be better. If I could have both? Yeah, I want that.”

Cyan felt smitten, a little flustered and also very fond. Black had much to learn but he seemed willing and open and kind. It would have to be a steep learning curve and there would have to be put some hard guidelines to probably try to pry away what he had learned in his training but Cyan believed in him.

“Okay, then should we go talk to Green and Purple? We all have a decision to make,” Cyan said and turned toward the door.

Black nodded and then reached for his helmet.

There was a hand on Black’s before he could pick it up. He stopped moving and took a moment to revel in the fact that Cyan was continuing to just touch him now. Gentle touches but reaching out all the same.

“Do you need the helmet?” Cyan asked.

Black shook his head.

“Would you feel uncomfortable with Green and Purple seeing you without it?”

Black needed to think about that for a moment but it was a relatively easy answer.

“I care less about them seeing than you, and you seem…” Black trailed off, unsure how to phrase that it meant so much that Cyan hadn’t negatively reacted to his appearance. It wasn’t something he had ever thought that he would care about but it was. He just didn’t want Cyan to be afraid of him.

“You thought I’d be scared?” Cyan asked, coming to a stop near the door, looking over his shoulder at Black. Cyan was baring his back once more. He did it so casually and for once, Black didn’t even think about how reckless it was to do.

Instead, he thought how he would need to earn the trust that Cyan was already so casually extending to him. He would become worthy of it. It would probably not be an easy task but he was a hard worker and he had never quite felt as motivated to so something. 

“I did,” Black said. “I should probably also confess that this isn’t my original form. It’s an imitation of your species.”

Cyan let out a sound that sounded amused and endeared. “I kind of figured. It would be very unlikely that any alien life form would be so similar to ours. I’d love to see your real form one day though, if you’d ever feel ready to show me.”

“You’d want to see that?” Black asked surprised. He had thought he might look intimidating like this but it really wasn’t anything compared to how he was in his own shape. He knew he wasn’t bad; he had actually been deemed quite attractive by his own standards but he wasn’t sure what humans liked.

“I said I wanted to know about you, didn’t I? Not now of course, but eventually. Maybe.”

Cyan’s words were spoken hesitantly just like Black had felt them turn inside of his own head. Maybe, they were more on the same page that they had realised.

“Yeah, eventually,” Black said with more confidence than he would have been able to speak with before hearing that Cyan also had insecurities but he seemed cautiously optimistic.

They decided to meet up at the cafeteria which was giving Black some not great flashbacks of the time he had been at tables like this while crewmates argued loudly over who was the killer. No good decisions seemed to ever be made for the whole crew in those discussions. It was usually where everyone was coming apart and accusing, usually, the wrong people. It had been good when Black had been an imposter, even if he had found all the yelling a little tedious. It had always been hot-headed decisions. Until this ship, this mission, because of Cyan and Green in particular. They seemed to have their emotions under control. Most of the time, at least.

Green still seemed calm and collected, if not a little cold. Black could respect that. Purple still seemed scared, throwing him glances as they kept fiddling with their hands. None of the two humans said anything to him having his helmet off. In fact, first Green and then Purple followed to move their visors up.

Black thought that all human eyes were pretty interesting to look at but none of the two pairs that looked at him now had any effect like when he had first been able to look into Cyan’s eyes. He wasn’t sure if there was something special about Cyan, or more likely about Black’s attachment to him.

“So…” Purple started, which was unusual. Black wasn’t sure he had ever heard them speak up first. There as some type of determination written across their body language. Black rather thought it suited them, instead of usually shivering in a corner. “So you’re an alien. You were sent here to infiltrate our ship, kill off all of the crew with your partner and then what?” Purple asked.

Black could feel Cyan and Green looking at him as well. He lowered his head slightly and started to explain, from the beginning. Cyan had heard most of it already but it had been in bits and fragments and never the whole story altogether like this. He gave an honest retelling of how he had been trained and what he had been trained to do and believe in. He didn’t reveal any vital information about his species, he didn’t think, but more about how he himself had fit into the world. Maybe vital information was slipping through but Black thought he owed these humans a proper explanation where he didn’t try to shield.

Once he finished, he looked over at Cyan and he was pretty sure he looked proud. It made something at the very core of Black feel warm and nice. Cyan was smiling now too, and there came a hand, casual and light to rest on his shoulder.

“Is this okay, by the way?” Cyan asked, looking down at his hand on Black’s shoulder. “Or would you rather we don’t touch you at all? I should have asked before I even gave you a hu-”

“No, don’t stop. I like it!” Black said, a little too fast and frantic but he didn’t want Cyan to get the wrong idea. He liked it very much. It was nice.

Black was busy looking at Cyan but he could feel that Purple and Green was starting. He tried not to mind it, not to snare and tell them to back off. If Cyan had been the same species as himself, he might have found such a protective and powerful display to be admirable. Black knew that Cyan wouldn’t like it so he bit his tongue.

Cyan started smiling and chuckling a little, Green let out a sigh and Purple a gentle gasp.

“Oh my gosh, you two _like_ each other,” Purple said. “That’s it, isn’t it? Was Black changed by the power of love? Oh my goodness, I don’t know how to even process that. That’s so romantic and a little scary maybe? I don’t know but, like star-crossed lovers.”

Cyan’s laughter deepened a little but he didn’t deny it outright.

“Calm down, Purple, it’s… not… I…” Cyan said and looked over at Black. “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“But yes, we do like each other,” Black said because he wanted to tell someone. Then he wondered if he was allowed to say that Cyan had told him that he liked him, and he tried to save it. “Well, I like Cyan. I thought that was obvious. He’s… he makes me want to be different. A better version?”

Cyan resisted the urge to facepalm, even if it was tempting because it could also give him a moment to hide his expression. There was something about Black that just made him feel flustered and on edge. But not necessarily in a bad way anymore.

“Hey Purp, can I talk to you? Alone for a moment?” Cyan asked and got up from his seat. Purple rose easily too and followed him down the hall.

Cyan had intended to just take them out of earshot but now that he was up on his feet, he found that he wanted to keep walking. He’d always liked it, keeping his feet active while his mind could ponder. Purple didn’t seem to mind and fell into step easily next to him.

Maybe it was because he was still without his helmet or because Purple had opened their visor but he was suddenly aware of how the younger crewmate was significantly taller than him. It was nice to be able to see their eyes, and the warmth and excitement in them now.

“So, did Green talk to you about UFO, the human-alien coalition?” Cyan started.

“You’d rather talk about that than Black and whatever the hell is going on there?” Purple asked and nudged Cyan’s shoulder a little. “You blush when he compliments you, you know?”

“I…” Cyan said, ready to defend himself but he didn’t like lying. “I know, but that’s not what’s most important. Whatever is happening between me and Black that is for us to sort out. You need to figure out if you could see yourself coming along with the two of us, and Green to that coalition. UFO, Black told me that they are called.”

“Really? That’s kind of cringe, and kind of cute at the same time.”

“Yeah, I started laughing when he told me, but I don’t think they care about silly human language from a time gone past. It’s still funny though,” Cyan said. “So, what did you think of it all?”

“The coalition plan, or the fact that my very first mission from MIRA should realistically have ended with me dead?” Purple asked and there was a clear note of cynicism that Cyan didn’t like in Purple’s voice.

He didn’t voice that. It wouldn’t be fair. Purple had come into this mission bright-eyed and ready for life and they had been smacked right in the face with the harsh reality that Cyan wished he could have shielded them from at least a little longer.

Purple had seen too many murders over the past couple of days. Whether they wanted to or not, it had forced them to shred the last bit of child-like innocence and naivety.

“The first one, but maybe it’s more important to talk about the second one. You should never have been sent on this mission, none of us should but least of all someone who was entirely green. It’s not fair,” Cyan said and he wanted to curse MIRA to into a black hole and back through it again.

How had they ever thought it was okay not to warn their crew of the dangers that they would likely encounter.

“It seems like the world hasn’t been fair to you either,” Purple said. “Green said you had a shoulder injury on a past mission and didn’t report it and now you have another.”

“Other shoulder though, so it evens out,” Cyan said and tried to make light of it. He should have figured out that Green had somehow found out about him too, if she’d known about Purple. Maybe, she had files on all of them. Cyan wondered if she had stumbled upon some forged ones for Black and White.

“That’s not funny,” Purple said in a deadpan voice, but then they cracked a small smile. “But yeah, I don’t know. I don’t want to go back home; I don’t want to work for MIRA anymore either. I don’t know what I want to be honest. So… moving forward seems like a good idea. That coalition thing sounds terrifying but also exciting. You’d be there to protect me, wouldn’t you?”

Cyan would usually have answered that he was in no position to protect anyone. It was how he had usually felt like he was too incompetent to protect anyone. He felt like he could barely take care of himself some days. But he felt different now.

He hadn’t managed to save all of the crew but Green and Purple had made it through and he had literally managed to drag Black back into the ship through sheer stubbornness and foolhardiness. He might be more capable than he thought.

“I would try my best to protect you. With everything I got, but space is dangerous.”

“Oh, I know,” Purple said and then looked back over their shoulder. “At least now.”

They had almost walked through the whole of the Skeld, now coming up past security. Cyan only then remembered that he had left Black alone with Green without worrying about it for one second.

It was clear that his heart had already decided to trust the alien, past be damned.

“And how do you feel about Black?”

“No worries, I’m not coming for your man,” Purple joked and raised their arms.

Cyan shook his head, but he was smiling at the joke. “Not what I meant and you know it. Not that I think Black is a man, he’s something else entirely. Gender is a construct anyway.”

“Preaching to the choir,” Purple said, and they winked in the most adorable way. “But I… yeah, it’s scary to think about but he did save us. White would have killed us all. He’s been here for hours and hours and had plenty of chances to kill us all. And like I said, he’s clearly so smitten with you that I doubt he’d want to do anything that upsets you. So, it’s more about not getting on your bad side if anything.”

“I would never weaponize him,” Cyan said. “I would never dream of it.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I know you wouldn’t. Three days in your company and anyone would be able to tell what kind of person you are. Why do you think I stuck with you from the beginning? You’re good and kind, so much so that even an alien picked up on it and started to question his entire existence. That’s big stuff.”

“Yeah,” Cyan said and paused outside of MedBay. So much had happened in that room. He kind of wanted to never go into it again.

“So, I am game with plan UFO or whatever we call it. We talked about the world being unfair, right? If those are people and aliens are trying to make it better, fairer, which it seems to be the case based on what Green thinks, then I am in. I have nothing to go back to anyway. You and Green are good people, and Black… I believe he could be better. I believe in him and you.”

“Oh,” Cyan said.

“You’re blushing again,” Purple teased and then skipped into the cafeteria.

Green and Black were where they had left them, engaged in quiet and calm conversation. Purple ran over and sat down next to them. Cyan walked up slowly and allowed himself to look at these three beings.

He could see it. A friendship and a partnership. A group that could make something good in the world, coming out of a shitty situation where none of them had truly been in control. It was an act of rebellion, for Black most of all but also for the rest of them. Some back on Earth or headquarters might call them traitors but Cyan didn’t see it that way.

It was the future. Inevitable.

He took his place next to Black with a small smile that everyone surely noticed anyway and they started to talk logistics of how to go about how to locate and apply for this coalition. Black and Green lead the conversation at that with Purple and Cyan mostly staring on in wonder. Cyan was making notes and trying to keep track of all the potential locations. Halfway through Bub came back from oxygen and informed them that it had installed a piece of itself to oxygen so that it would alert the robot directly if oxygen started depleting just the tiniest bit. Purple and Green removed their helmets entirely after that.

The discussion carried on over late lunch, or early dinner, and it was something weird to be able to eat without having to go through the helmet compartment but Cyan quite liked it. He had not quite realised how hungry he had gotten. Black ate only small bits but he did so overly cautiously, like he still wasn’t sure how to bite properly down with his teeth.

Once they had come to a conclusion of the best charted course to find UFO, Green and Black went to navigation to chart it while Purple and Cyan went through the status of the ship and looking in on anything that might be in need of repair. The Skeld seemed to be holding up relatively well, but it was about to make a long journey through space now and they needed it to be in tiptop shape.

Cyan was still Black’s favourite but he was beginning to see why Cyan had liked Green and Purple so much. They were smart and funny and they seemed like good people. Green was a force to be reckoned with and the exact type of clever human that he had been trained to kill on sight. He was so happy that neither himself or White had managed to pick her off early like they had planned.

She was a tremendous accent to have right now. They charted a course that would take them through a couple of areas that was suspected to have UFO bases. It would not be easy for the coalition was used to operating covertly but they should be able to find them somewhere.

“You know, I’ve thought about doing this for a while. MIRA was getting shittier and shitter with their treatment of their people, and the aggressive colonisation that they have planned never suited my tastes either, but I can surely say that this isn’t how I would have imagined it,” she said, conversationally as her hands worked.

Black knew he was supposed to reply but he wasn’t sure how.

“I never thought I would ever do something like this. How long has it been? Three days? Unthinkable. It goes against everything I have ever been taught.”

Green’s hands kept moving, practiced movements, but she turned to look at him for just a moment.

“Human kindness is something special, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Black said.

“It is not something that everyone is so good at practicing but we should all be better at it, like Cyan. I am glad his actions opened your eyes. But rest assured, if I find you stepping out of line for even a second, I will not hesitate to kill you. Or at least attempt it. I’m aware you would be difficult to bring down. We are all extending an enormous amount of trust to you, and we have forgiven you for your past wrongdoings only to the extent that you can never do something like that again and you have to work to make the world better. Do not forget that. Cyan will never be able to strike to kill, but I can if I need.”

There was something oddly reassuring about that and Black found himself smiling. He could understand this aspect of humans better, it was closer in line with what he had been taught.

But still different in a very important way. Green was trusting him, despite his past, and only if he messed up again and betrayed the trust, would she strike. It was fair to Black. He was glad they had Green on the team, so he knew someone would hold him responsible.

Black liked Cyan so much, but he was too soft-hearted to ever do something like this.

“I want you to do that,” Black said. “I promised Cyan I would do better and if I don’t? Someone needs to hold me properly accountable.”

“You two are an odd pair but somehow it makes sense,” Green said and got up from her spot. “Okay, it’s all charted. We’ll reach the first destination in about three days. Now we’ve got nothing else to do than keep the ship running and trying to study up on UFO for the next couple of days.”

Black nodded. He knew all of that needed to be done but all he could think was that he would have three whole days to be able to chat with Cyan. He wanted to know so much more about him and now they finally had time. No one was going to get murdered or thrown out of the Skeld.

Just time to be them. So much had happened in three days under stressful conditions and now they had the same amount of time but in a much more relaxed environment.

Black still felt a little concerned about what the future might bring but that uncertainty felt almost exciting. For the first time in his entire existence, his next steps weren’t planned out for him.

He could walk his own path.

Cyan found Black sitting in navigation even after Green had come out and told him and Purple that everything was done. They had three free days to just brush up on what information they could find and keep the ship running as smoothly as possible.

The communication lines to MIRA had already been cut.

But since they knew of the imposter infestation problem, they would assume that was what had happened. They could not have been more wrong but it was a good thing. It meant that they wouldn’t come after them right now. In the long run, they would need to find any and all tracking devices that could report back to MIRA and destroy them but they had time for now before it became necessary.

Cyan wondered if they could make the Skeld a home or if they should try to find another vessel moving forward. The possibilities were endless. It was kind of exciting.

Their possibilities were like the universe. Infinite.

Black had without a doubt heard Cyan walk up but he didn’t turn his head until Cyan sat down next to him. Cyan kept his gaze forward looking out into the space that surrounded them. Whenever he could steal a moment away on missions, he would like to come up to any of the window planes and just look.

Admire the thing that had made him want to be out here in the vastness of space in the first place. He hadn’t had time this time around until just now. It felt fitting somehow.

“Have you travelled much in space, or only for your missions?” Cyan asked, voice low and relaxed. He leaned back in his seat a little, mostly watching the stars but also registering Black in the corner of his eye.

“Only for missions, never got to just… travel. Explore. Never knew I wanted,” Black said and his voice sounded a little far away, lost in his thoughts. “But I kind of want now. It’s strange not having a mission, someone to make proud or fear disappointing. I think I like it a lot.”

“Yeah,” Cyan said, voice coming out softly. “Me too.”

“Do you really think the two of us could make something work?” Black asked.

They were both looking out through the window, but it felt like there were something tying them to each other all the same.

Cyan didn’t turn his head but he went over Black in his head, and all that they had been through. It was a lot and there were some really bad things, some things that Cyan would have sworn up and down that he would never ever forgive but that had been so easy to judge before being in the situation.

In real life nothing was easy. But Black had good qualities and he wanted to do better where he was lacking and he was ready to apologise and atone for his past. Cyan also knew that he wasn’t flawless himself, even if Black seemed to see it that way.

“I get grumpy sometimes, you know, even if I try not to take it out on either. I would rather hurt myself than strike out but I get bad too. Cruel to myself at times. Not attentive enough to those around me, you should know all of that too.”

“You think that makes me think you have flaws? I don’t like you because I think you’re flawless. I like you because you are good and kind no matter how much else you must have to deal with,” Black said and there was a touch on Cyan’s hand.

Almost so soft and light that he didn’t notice it but when he did, his heart jumped just for a beat.

He turned his hand over and Black carefully threaded their fingers together. It was different to how they had held hand in space, clutching onto each other like a life line. Cyan liked this a whole lot more.

“I will still need time,” Cyan said. “We go slow, yeah? Figure out what we are separately and together moving forward, you know? When we go meet all the other humans and aliens at UFO, you might even realise that I am nothing special.”

“What foolish words, my dear,” Black said and Cyan’s whole body felt alit with the nickname. “Too much?” Black asked. “I’ve heard that humans like nicknames when they are close but I should have as-”

“No, it’s alright,” Cyan said. “We’re friends, right? New friends sure, with a complicated history, definitely, and an interest in each other that goes beyond the platonic, yes, but also just… two being getting to know each other? Right?”

“I am not sure I am meant to comprehend all of that at once.”

Cyan chuckled. “I know, sorry. My brain is weird.”

“It’s not weird, it is wonderful,” Black said earnestly. “And I’m glad to be your… whatever we are. Black and Cyan. Just figuring it out together.”

Cyan hummed happily. “Yeah, I really like that. Except for one thing.”

Black seemed to tense just a little but he eased off almost immediately. Like going tense was his instinctive reaction but he then realised that he was safe here. Comfortable. Cyan’s heart melted a little.

“What’s your real name?” Cyan asked, as gave Black’s hand a squeeze.

They exchanged names and that was one of the first personal things they freely gave to each other. It would be the first of many for the two of them. They would end up becoming quite the legendary couple, and group too, along with the rest of the crew.

They were there at the start, coming in with the intention to try to make the whole universe a little kinder, one action of a time. More humans and aliens alike joined their cause and their little family grew bigger.

Their actions would end up going down in history, all because one human extended kindness and one imposter alien was open enough to listen.

• ✦ . 🌘 . . . . . . ﾟ . ✦ , . • . . 🌏 . . ✦ . • . . . • ✦ . • ✦ • ˚ . . ☄ . • . . . . . • . . • ✦ . . 🪐 . . . . . ﾟ . ✦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Reblog on tumblr](https://secretlywritingstories.tumblr.com/post/633795277900464128/the-calm-to-the-storm-among-us) (thank you to those who do)  
> [Come chat to me on my main](http://natigail.tumblr.com/) (if you want)
> 
> I can't believe it's finally done! This was meant to be a cute little thing and instead it grew into this little beast. I'm really happy with how it turned out though and Cyan and Black have a special place in my heart, Green and Purple and Bub too to be honest and I imagine that those five will go out and change the world, just a little. I can't see myself coming back to write that, but I never say never. But for now, this feels like a good place to stop their story.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has read along while I have been posting this and thank you for all of your encouraging comments, this was my first time writing in this fandom and that's always a little daunting so thank you for welcoming me so warmly.


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